Hi Graeme (and David)

Good idea. like you my Tech drawing is as old as the hills. In response to a query on a forum here I recently attempted to produce a 2D drawing from a CAD package – I have zero knowledge – and after some hours of error and frustration I did get a little way along the road. In the end though I resorted to photographing the bits and adding dimensions in Photoshop. Not very satisfactory.

How about one of you knowledgeable guys out there finding a simple ( free download) 2D drawing package and penning a few notes of assistance – and David how about running this as an intro to 2D CAD in MEW?

Edited By NJH on 21/03/2012 19:05:17

One solution for drawing only is Libre Office Draw. Libre Office is the open-source equivalent of Microsoft Office and is excellent, and free. Draw is very intuitive to use to produce drawings but I haven't found a way yet to export into DXF to enter a CAM program. But well worth a look if you just want to produce drawings.  Also available and compatible across PC, MAC, and Linux operating systems.

Edited By John Haine on 21/03/2012 20:44:59

But surely the things we make are inherently 3D, so why would we want to design them in 2D?

Over the years I've used pencil and paper, proper drawing boards, several flavours of 2D, and of 3D, CAD. Personally I wouldn't use anything other than 3D CAD now. I find it more intuitive and quicker than 2D; it also allows me to assemble components to check for fits and alignments before cutting metal. And for multi-dimensional curves and free form surfaces it's not easy to accurately represent them in 2D form.

Regards,

Andrew

Quack, quack: that's me ducking!

Andrew,

Just bought a copy last week, they had a 20% sale on.

looked but it's been transfered to Viacad pro 7 this week.

Not used it yet, work getting in the way.

John s.

I have posted this before probably on this forum but also many other forums, so here goes again.

CAD is like religion.

There is no one program suits all. What one person recomends and gets on with, another will hate.

The answer is to sort the recomendations out and then download the demo's and then work thru the tutorials. Allow 3 to 5 days for a 2D program and 10 days for a 3D program before deciding.

They all have a learning curve, some greater than others but this can pay off over a period of time in increased productivity. I know most are not in production but unless CAD is your hobby then the idea is to get on with the next part of the job.

Many of the things we do in the workshop are 2D objects, in fact most are derived from 2D drawings. 2D CAD systems tend to be very quic and it's surprising what you can do with them, lets face it 2D is only an electronic drawing board and we had manual drawing boards for ages and even won a few world wars with them.

3D is very good when assemblies come into play, will it fit etc but at the expense of a steep learning curve and in most cases a longer way of doing things. What many do not realise is it's hard to get a 2D drawing from a sketch in a 3D program. You have to sketch the part, extrude it and work on it to get the 3D shape then the 2D draing can be automatically generated from the 3D model. If you only want a quick sketch for a layout then this can be frustrating.

This doesn't give you as much control over the drawing as a a 2D program where what you draw is what you see.

Basically what I am saying is decide if you need to go the full 3D route when you start. For many given that virtually all the drawing in MEW and ME are 2D drawings, this can make the learing curve a lot easier.

John S.