Athearn 0-4-2t - binding gears?

Nice work. When is the Plymouth model going to be made?

How does one pick up how to to CAD? I learned mechanical drawing in JHS and college back in the early 80s. I never did it profesionally. I've been trying to learn CAD for like ten, twelve years now by myself with no luck. I've tried Deltacad and Cad 3-D. I just can't get it.

Reply to
newyorkcentralfan
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Or a 15 place Kurta the size of (it's namesake) a peppermill - set the sliders, then rotate the top one step at a time, cranking the number of times for that place. A true thing of beauty, wonderfully finished, knurled where appropriate, satin gloss smooth or flat black elsewhere. Really sorry I ever sold it when I stopped rallying.

Or frisbee sized - Stevens Rally Calculator

Reply to
Steve Caple

[...]

Never heard of 'em, which should tell you something. ;-) I've found no two CAD programs to have the same quirks. IE, there is _no_ standard to their operations. EG, some draw a circle with the clicked point as the centre, some draw it tangent to that point. Etc. -- What I'd like is a CAD operation that allows me to draw a line or curve, and then drag and rotate it to where I want it.... haven't found one that does this, but it must be out there.

Try starting with free-hand, dimensioned sketch. Then draw one line at a time. A proper CAD program allows you to specify a line by end point in terms of x, y co-ordinates, and length. So think graph paper, and things will start to become clear. I hope. ;-) It worked for me.

Not that CAD is that much easier than paper and pencil, in fact it's more of a hassle than it's worth for the kind of small projects most people want to draw -- you know the kind for which a sketch plan is usually enough, anyhow. Such as an 8x12 garden shed, for example. You really don't need drawings accurate to 1/16" for that. ;-)

The fairly steep learning curve for any kind of computer assisted creativity program (whether it's CAD, or music composition, or image processing) is the reason that few amateurs use them. That's why track planning software is not as widely used as its makers would like: just how precisely do you need to plan a 4x8 layout? Or a 18"x10' shelf layout? Sketches on 1/4" squared paper are more than good enough.

CAD is worth the learning effort for professionals, because it eliminates the professional's bane: the effect of a design change, or error in dimensioning, which will require the redrafting of at least that drawing, and usually many others. But the actual design of the drawing, ie, the design of the object being drafted, is as much a creative task whether you use hand drafting or CAD, or 2D or 3D. Creativity, the envisioning of possibilities and the translation of these into visuals that others can understand, is not made any easier by CAD. If you have 5 thumbs on each hand, CAD just makes it easier to make nice, neat drawings, is all. Once the design is more less settled, then CAD proves its worth: it's easy to create variations, and easy to make production drawings.

That's my two cents worth.

HTH

Reply to
Wolf K.

Agreed. It really was beautiful, but that was 50 years ago. Really precision made, in Vaduz, as I remember.

Circular pocket sized slide rules, certainly. Mine had 60in scale - but long gone.

Reply to
Brian Bailey

I was really sorry some years ago when we were driving from friends' place on the Bodensee to meet some other friends for a week in Sent (just east of Scuol, it's a delightful Engadiner town perched amid wildflower filled pastures on the steep north slope of the Inn river valley, with signs in Romontsch and houses painted Engadiner style with pictures of saints and poems or mottos and trompe l'oeil quoins and door and window frames painted on the stuccoed walls) and passed through Liechtenstein without stopping to see if the factory had a museum. Those peppermills are the sort of things that belong in a museum of industrial design.

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Reply to
Steve Caple

But for planning to use something other than one manufacturer's sectional track, it's a marvelous tool and worth the time - as well as being useful for all sorts of drawing projects (at least Cadrail is).

Reply to
Steve Caple

I've still got my one from high school, plus one I picked up in a second-hand shop twenty years ago. I find it most useful when converting plans from one scale to another - set it at the ratio of scales and read the new dimension straight off. A pocket calculator does the same thing to 6-8 decimal figures in four times as long, but my ruler doesn't measure to 6-8 decimal figures.

Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

Sectional track? Wozzat??

(Just kidding.) ;-)

I've designed a lot of layouts, at least five designed for others were built. I never assumed the use of sectional track, just used the radii that the commissioning friend said he wanted to use. Since sectional track comes in certain radii (eg, 18", 22", etc for Atlas), that's all you really need to know. It's easy to estimate the number of sections of track needed, and if some won't fit as sold, just cut 'em up. One should never be limited by the manufacturer's notion of useful lengths of track.

For turnouts, I had a template cut out of card, showing location of points, frog, and clearance points at each end (where the tracks are far enough apart for trains to pass each other safely.) Actually, I used templates for everything, including curves. I allowed enough clearance for easements. I never tried to squeeze in an extra few inches of track, as that guaranteed construction problems.

HTH

Reply to
Wolf K.

The Plymouth is proceeding slowly as there are other, higher priority projects ahead of it (mostly honey do's). I need a little more work on the brass casting (the bottom part) to get it ready to be quoted. Luckily here in Rhode Island there is still some remnants of the jewelry industry that used to be a major part of the economy. So there are several investment casting houses that excel at small, detailed castings.

As far as learning CAD, I would resist any temptation to learn 2-D first, especially if this is a career move. There is no future in it. In fact, there is no future in 2-D drawings in any form, digital or paper. As an engineering communication tool, they are headed for the shredder. All required information for any purpose can be imbedded in solid model files including dimensions, dimensional and geometric tolerances, material and finish and anything else required. The advantage that a machine operator has when (s)he can view a solid model on the computer screen and rotate it all directions first before proceeding cannot be overstated.

Before going to the computer, look at some simple shapes and think about how they could be (and are) formed. A solid cylinder is often formed on a lathe by turning it on its axis. For a hollow cylinder, move a circle along a line perpendicular to its plane, as in forming a hole by plunging a drill or end mill. Form a donut (torus) by rotating a circle about an axis in its plane. For a free form piece of wire or tubing, move a circle along a 3D spline. And so on.

These are the same ways the computer will form solids. Frequently you draw a shape on a plane or existing planar surface and then move it through space in some controlled way. It is either adding or subtracting "material" as it goes, depending on the need. Real and computer parts are combinations of these simpler moves.

For learning the mechanics of using a particular program, I found it most helpful to do every tutorial I could find. Also, see if you can find a users group to join, especially a local one in which you can meet face to face with people who have either already learned it or are going through the same thing you are.

Good luck. It will be worth the effort.

Bill MacIndoe

snipped-for-privacy@bigfoot.com wrote:

Reply to
MacIndoe

I suspect the next time anyone goes to the moon it will be more likely that it will be soyez capsule if anything. unfortunately I suspect that propping up puppet regimes in foreign nations is a higher priority to the US than reaching the moon or anything else in space.

Reply to
jeffrey David Miller

"Wolf K." wrote in news:478a4115$0$14070$ snipped-for-privacy@news.newshosting.com:

*snip*

Have you tried CadStd? From what I remember (I'm short on time here so I'm not going to research it), it allows you to choose your circle drawing method from the menu. You can also sorta drag and drop your shapes once done, by moving them. Select the shape, activate the move command, select a point on the shape, move to where you want that shape, place it.

Nice simple program, but it does have its quirks. It looks at the GUI differently than most other programs.

Puckdropper

Reply to
Puckdropper

MacIndoe wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mindspring.com:

*snip*

*snip*

While I won't disagree that 2-D drawings are going out as far as finished drawings are concerned, I do disagree that learning 2-D drawing is a waste of time. All a 2-D drawing is is a straight-on view of one side of a 3-D image. Sometimes you lose important details when you try to look at multiple sides at once.

I find them easier to dimension and read dimensions off them, but this is only for my own use. If I had to do just a 3-D drawing, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't use CAD.

Disclaimer: CAD and mechanical drawing is just a hobby to me.

Puckdropper

Reply to
Puckdropper

I've been using CadStd, it's free and it has just the basic functions so it's easy to learn.

Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

Thanks for the pointer, just downloaded it, but won't be trying it until sometime later. It's 12:17AM here, time for sleep.

Nitey nite.

Reply to
Wolf K.

This is not the appropiate orum for your - or anyone els's - political rants, right wing or left wing.

You just forfeited the opportunity to appear on my news reader.

Bye.

Reply to
jJim McLaughlin

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