cadalyst
Manufacturing

MCAD Tech News #208

2 May, 2007 By: Jeffrey Rowe


Untitled Document

Make Your Own

RESOURCES AND IDEAS ABOUND FOR REKINDLING THE CREATIVE SPARK IN ALL OF US.

I grew up in a town just west of Detroit, Michigan, and needless to say, when I was a kid growing up (OK, in the 50s) I was around a lot of stuff being built. My father and most of my friends’ fathers worked directly or indirectly for an automotive company in some capacity or other, and just about everyone designed and made something. Back then there were literally thousands of tiny shops around the area that made everything imaginable for cars, whether it was manifold gaskets or little electric motors for cooling fans that sat on top of a dashboard.

I feel fortunate to have grown up in such a creative environment because it instilled in me a lifelong desire to make things. It’s probably the reason, too, that I got college degrees in both mechanical engineering and industrial design.

During the past few years, there has been a resurgence of the DIY (do it yourself) movement and a shift away from simply buying things to actually modifying or making things.

I realize this isn't directly MCAD-related, but I know a lot of you engineers and other readers out there are creative and inventive, and I'd like to take a diversion into a fun topic this week. I hope these resources will inspire and support your own home-grown designs and manufacturing. Don't forget to share your love of DIY with a child -- maybe your enthusiasm will light a passion in a future engineer.

Read more>>


MCAD Modeling: Turning a Sow's Ear into a 3D Silk Purse

By Mike Hudspeth, IDSA

We aren't all lucky enough to have started out with 3D solid modeling. Most of our products started on a drafting board or at least in 2D CAD. For the sake of discussion, I'll assume everyone has a 3D-modeling system now. What are we going to do about our legacy data? We have a huge amount of stuff that is at best 2D. What will we do when we have a component to incorporate into our design and we can't get a 3D model of it? Panic? Not yet. We have many choices for pulling data into our modeling software. Read more>>


Mark Your Calendar: MCAD Events

MasterGraphics' Autodesk 2008 Product Solutions Seminars
Various May Dates
Various Midwestern Cities
MasterGraphics' Autodesk 2008 Product Solutions Seminars will provide design data specialists in the manufacturing, building and civil industries with in-depth exposure to the most current Autodesk software. The tutorials will provide users with the opportunity to see how the right combination of process innovations and software upgrades can make a dynamic, positive impact on every facet of design operations. Read more

For Cadalyst's full calendar of events, click here.