Drawing Software

[Captain Scarlet]

I am about (finally!) to embark on building my 20” dob. I bought the mirrors 2.5 years ago, and it’s languished in a box since then.

I know exactly what I want made regarding the metal bits of the mirror cell, but I don’t have the machine tools to do it. However I have found a local-ish firm that can make them. But I need drawings.

Can anyone recommend any easily available drawing software wherein I can draw up and send what I need to send to them? I do have an old copy of Autodesk/Autosketch somewhere in storage but so far I’ve been unable to find it amongst all the boxes.

Thanks, Magnus

[vlaiv]

FreeCad?

You can make a 3D model to help you visualize things and then it is rather easy to make technical drawings of different projections of that model.

Software is free / open source, so it might not be as polished - but it works. I use it for modeling of 3d parts that I 3d print.

[Dr_Ju_ju]

Another freebie from Autodesk, is Tinkercad (https://tinkercad.com), a browser tool, which is what I mainly use, then there is Openscad (https://openscad.org) also free, and is a desktop tool, but does take a little more getting used to....

[Elp]

Autodesk Fusion. It's so quick and easy to model with, annotated drawings take little to no time once the object is 3d modelled and you can then submit the 3d CAD to them.

[Star Gazer]

I would give onshape https://www.onshape.com/en/ a try. It's free and can be used on just about any computer, since it is browser based in the cloud. Noe that if you do use onshape then your designs are public unless you pay for a licence.

[Gasman]

I use DesignSpark Mechanical for all my 3d stuff, the free version won't allow importing stl's but you can still create and save them!

Steve

[Captain Scarlet]

Thanks for the responses. I’ve opted for the moment for FreeCad. It took a while for its “logic” to click and now it seems natural: Objects / Relationships&Constraints / Degrees of Freedom etc. I tried a couple of YouTube intros but I get irritated by them so quickly, I ended up just fiddling around until things seemed to work.

Cheers Magnus

[teoria_del_big_bang]

On 08/08/2023 at 16:45, Star Gazer said:

I would give onshape https://www.onshape.com/en/ a try. It's free and can be used on just about any computer, since it is browser based in the cloud. Noe that if you do use onshape then your designs are public unless you pay for a licence.

+1 for OnShape

Steve

[Dave_D]

nanoCAD v5 which is free or onShape. both really good, i did 10+ years on autocad and nanocad is the only one i've found that i was happy with for quick and easy 2D stuff

Edited August 10, 2023 by Dave_D