Advanced Engineering Tech - CAD spftware

I am a recent engineering graduate (BS mechanical) currently working a technician job. I have been working on a project and have been asked to make drawings of the device I am building. They have a really simple visualCAD program I could use.

I was just wondering if their is a way to get a decent version of autoCAD (used autocad2000 in college for 2D stuff, worked great) and not spend two or more paychecks on it. I wold like to have something for myself at home, probibly look good on the resume with some real CAD experience.

Figured some of you guys might have experience with CAD and such.

Thanks,
Matt

Jezz, I can't even spell the subject line right:bang:

SolidWorks, AutoDesk Inventor, and ProE would be the industry leaders with SolidWorks and Inventor being the most used. All you'll have to lay down a good chuck of change to purchase, autocad or any other 2d cad software are mostly used for civil and hvac applications not for mechanical.

what school did you graduate from anyways, very surprised you didn't get exposer in any of these programs or solid modeling in general?

Justin

I did have classes in 3D CAD, used ProE wildfire, also had class in 2D CAD where we used autoCAD 200?. I am just looking for a decent 2d program I can use at home.

I guess its one of those oxymoron’s, affordable CAD software

torrents are your friend

ProE seems to still be in business because of legacy data. At least in the environment I'm in.

Solidworks seems to be the most popular flavor.....at least the most I've seen in job postings.

torrents are your friend

ProE seems to still be in business because of legacy data. At least in the environment I'm in.

Solidworks seems to be the most popular flavor.

yes torrents are definitely your friend.

There are probably some AutoCad versions that are DOS only that would be cheap to pick up. Heck, I talked to some draftsmen not too long ago and they'll fire up AutoCAD 12 because it takes them half the time compared to modern GUI. (Mainly for CNC plasma cutter)

I don't recommend torrenting for commercial stuff though. IANAL, but there can be very nasty consequences if it has a phone-home feature.

Dont have any experience with the torrenting stuff, could be a possibility.

Did some searching around and have heard some good stuff about DesignCAD
http://imsidesign.com/Products/OtherProducts/DesignCADSeries/DesignCAD3DMAXV20/tabid/1573/Default.aspx

Its pretty cheap on amazon, maybe I will mess around with the trial this weekend

If you work in Defense ProE is your system. Legacy and ability to work with expreamly large complex systems make it ok, US based locks it into the defense ind.

Solidworks is better for smaller business with less complex systems.

Catia is the system used by non government aerospace co. Also heavily used by car manufactures.

Best location for picking up one is Torrents.

We use solidworks, autocad and Inventor here. Solidworks seems to be the industry standard from what I've experienced...I will say that I enjoy using Inventor more so than the others. They're all easy to teach yourself but I will say autodesk support is pretty good if you ever need it. Also keep in mind that most decent software can export to whatever file format you need. And if not, there are quite a few converters out there as well.

Nick

Are you required to hand over electronic files, or just PDFs? I know doing small stuff on the side, I would use the educational version, and crop the drawing in Adobe to get rid of the educational banner, but if you need to distribute electronic DWG files, this is not a valid solution.

you could use straight g-codes, and then you will probably have better luck finding a program to illustrate them.

Wow, are you talking G101X....Y.... and G102/3X....Y....I....J....? EIA and ESSI code extensions? Thats some imaginative thinking...

I have used TurboCAD, not at all proficient but it seems
quite fully featured and not expensive (they hit me up a
few times a year for upgrades and I never go for it, but
they get down to $149 or so right before the -next-
release). Lots of rendering fanciness, 3D solid stuff and
so on. Seems to support a lot of import/export.

Full versions of autoCAD are popping up frequently on ebay for cheap (comparatively)

I was looking to upgrade my version (TurboCAD v6)
to current v17, but I found on their web site that
they are also selling back-versions for real cheap;
ended up going for V15 with some bonus training
materials, for $39.95 - not bad for 2D, 3D and near-
photo-realistic surface rendering (purportedly).

The best offer I got from their upgrade-spam was
like $99; v16 version is now down to $79 but the
last one to support Windows 2000 is the v15 so I
picked that.