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« on: November 15, 2009, 09:14:25 AM » |
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Darn! I should've posted this over here first!
I've seen a couple Free CAD programs for students and poor folks laying around .... I'll address 3D modeling and rendering in a different topic soon.
For Windows and Linux try
FreeCAD http://softwaresanta.com/smf/index.php?topic=274.0
"FreeCAD will be a general purpose 3D CAD modeller. The development will be completely Open Source. As modern 3D CAX modellers it will have a 2D component to extract design drawings from the 3D model, but 2D (like AutoCAD) is not the focus, neither are animation and organic shapes (Maya, 3D StudioMAX, Cinema 4D). FreeCAD will aim directly to mechanical engineering, product design and related features (like CatiaV4 and V5, and SolidWorks). It will be a feature based parametric modeler."
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For all platforms:
BRL-CAD http://softwaresanta.com/smf/index.php?topic=1286.0
"BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform Open Source combinatorial Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes interactive 3D solid geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface, and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and analysis.
For more than 20 years, BRL-CAD has been the primary tri-service solid modeling CAD system used by the U.S. military to model weapons systems for vulnerability and lethality analyses. The solid modeling system is frequently used in a wide range of military, academic, and industrial applications including in the design and analysis of vehicles, mechanical parts, and architecture. The package has also been used in radiation dose planning, medical visualization, computer graphics education, CSG concepts and modeling education, and system performance benchmark testing among other purposes.
BRL-CAD supports a great variety of geometric representations including an extensive set of traditional CSG primitive implicit solids such as boxes, ellipsoids, cones, and tori, as well as explicit solids made from closed collections of Uniform B-Spline Surfaces, Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) surfaces, n-Manifold Geometry (NMG), and purely faceted mesh geometry. All geometric objects may be combined using boolean set-theoretic CSG operations including union, intersection, and difference." That there is one powerful tool for free!
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For Designing Ships Sails CAD: Sailcut CAD http://softwaresanta.com/smf/index.php?topic=1401.0
"Sailcut CAD is a sail design and plotting software which allows you to design and visualise your own sail and compute the accurate development of all panels in flat sheets. The original Sailcut was a Basic program developped by Robert Lainé in 1978. The new version, called Sailcut CAD, is written in C++ and is developped jointly by Robert Lainé and Jeremy Lainé. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL).
Sailcut CAD is able to do cross cut, twist foot cut, vertical cut, mitre cut and radial cut sail design as well as wing sails, all in a number of languages. It also includes a viewer where you can assembled a hull, a rig and a set of sails to see how they match. Sailcut CAD has been successfully used for making sails for racing and cruising yacht as well as for model boats."
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For CAD using Legos: LeoCAD http://softwaresanta.com/smf/index.php?topic=900.0
"LeoCAD is a CAD program that uses bricks similar to those found in many toys (but they don't represent any particular brand). Currently it has a library of more than 1000 different pieces, most of them were created by James Jessiman (the author of LDraw).
Instructions and Animations
LeoCAD can be used to create building instructions and animations, making it a very powerful editor. When you start the program you're placed in Instruction mode by default, you can switch between Animation and Instruction mode using the Mode Button () from the Animation Toolbar.
Each program mode stores the position and orientation of all objects in separate places, so changing the position of an object on one mode does not change it on the other mode. To easily copy the position from the other mode, choose Copy Keys From ... from the Pieces Menu.
When you're in Instruction Mode, each time unit is called a Step and when you're in Animation Mode, each time unit is called a Frame. The most important difference between the 2 modes is how Keyframing works."
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