Free CAD Software for Engineers and Designers. Free CAD software shouldn’t have to break the bank. There are thousands of kinds of free CAD software available. Better World Books uses the power of business to change the world. We pride ourselves on our service. We guarantee that the book you order will meet or exceed. Possibly tens of thousands. But there are far fewer free programs in the CAD realm—if only because CAD software is incredibly difficult to create. Here are three free CAD software programs that offer something really special. They’re each from major software developers who sell commercial grade 3. D MCAD software. These vendors, of course, hope that you’ll love the software they’re giving away, and will buy their commercial software—but they’re not playing the “let’s give away useless software” game. This free CAD software is good stuff. If you try it, you’re going to like it. Iron. CAD COMPOSEIron. CAD COMPOSE is one of those programs that takes too much work to describe. Heres’s how it works: You open up a blank scene file in Iron.
CAD COMPOSE, and then drag and drop models and assemblies from other CAD systems into that scene. You then move those models and assemblies as you like, until you get an arrangement you like. And, if you want, add animation. Iron. CAD COMPOSE lets you build up assemblies by dragging and dropping individual parts from catalog files. These assemblies can be animated, rendered or exported to 3. D PDF format. That’s the simplistic explanation of how Iron. CAD COMPOSE works. The important question is this: What can you use it for? Quite a variety of things, it turns out. You can use it to create assembly instructions and animations for your factory. Your sales people can use it to create customer presentations of configure- to- order products. You can lay out your office, or your assembly line, or most any other space you’d like, in full 3. D. And other people in your organization can use the Iron. CAD viewer to explore those compositions. Or, if you prefer, you can save your compositions as animation files, rendered images, or 3. D PDFs, and put them up on your website. Iron. CAD COMPOSE is also free. You can download it from Iron. CAD’s website, and you don’t need to pay anything. Iron. CAD COMPOSE is essentially a CAD program for creating assemblies of assemblies. It has all of the parts creation tools removed. It works with existing parts and assemblies, and lets you compose what are essentially digital mock- ups. Out of the box (so to speak), it can read a variety of faceted 3. D formats, including STL, VRML, 3. D Studio, Auto. CAD 3. D DXF, True. Space, and Wavefront (OBJ). No matter which CAD systems you’re using, you should be able to create one or more of these formats. If you prefer to work with live CAD files (as I do), for $1. Iron. CAD will sell you a translator (COMPOSE Trans) that’ll read native files from ACIS, PARASOLID, IGES, STEP, CATIA, Pro- E, Unigraphics, Solid. Works, and Inventor. That’s the only “catch” to Iron. CAD COMPOSE’s free price. Once files are imported into Iron. CAD COMPOSE, you can add attachment points on them (to allow smart snapping between parts), and, if you like, save them in a catalog, for later reuse. COMPOSE includes several sample catalogs of parts, finishes and textures. The program is entirely drag- and- drop, push- pull. To lay out a conveyor, for example, you just open the conveyor catalog, and start dropping parts and sub- assemblies into the scene. When you drop one part onto another part, they automatically snap together in the proper orientation, based on their attachment points. A good example of a company that uses Iron. CAD catalogs is Skyline Displays, a well known supplier of trade show exhibit furniture. Skyline has taken the CAD models of its products, and saved them as Iron. CAD catalogs. Using Iron. CAD COMPOSE and those catalogs, almost anyone could snap- together a custom Skyline trade show booth in no time flat. Skyline has been using Iron. CAD, and creating catalogs with it, since about 2. But, they haven’t actually been using Iron. CAD COMPOSE. First, because COMPOSE only came out in May of this year, and second, because Iron. CAD wouldn’t be nuts enough to put everything Skyline needed (for example, a quotation system and an interface to ERP) into a program that they were giving away for free. Iron. CAD did, however, put enough capabilities into COMPOSE that it’s a useful and flexible tool for a lot of ancillary jobs that typical CAD systems aren’t really appropriate for. As you might imagine, Iron. CAD is hoping that a lot of people will use COMPOSE for interesting projects, and will start liking its drag- and- drop method of operation. If that happens, a certain number of people are going to take a look at Iron. CAD, and realize that it’s a pretty interesting tool—even working along side other CAD systems. Auto. CAD Inventor Fusion. Not many companies give away really competent solid modeling free CAD software. Autodesk won’t be giving away Inventor Fusion forever, but for at least until next April, you can download a copy from Autodesk Labs, and enjoy using without going out of pocket even a single cent. Inventor Fusion is a “technology preview.” It’s Autodesk’s attempt to grab not just the attention of their existing users, but those of their competitors as well. Inventor Fusion is what is generally called a direct modeling CAD program. It doesn’t require the use of history- based parametric features. Rather, it lets you edit most any 3. D CAD files—solid or surface—without the need to understand how they were built, or even what CAD system created it. Inventor Fusion supports reading an exceptionally wide array of 3. D CAD formats, including those from most of the major players, including CATIA V5, NX, Pro/E, Solid. Works, Alias, Parasolid, ACIS, STEP, IGES, and even Rhino. About the only important 3. D CAD formats it’s missing are JT and 3. D PDF. Autodesk Inventor Fusion supports direct editing of both solid and surface models. Someday it will cost money. For now, it’s free. While Inventor Fusion is designed to work in conjunction with Autodesk Inventor (the non- fusion version), it stands on its own merits, in three particular areas. First, Inventor Fusion has a well- refined interface. It doesn’t spread your attention all over the screen. Rather, it keeps the information you need near where you’re working. Its selection tools are nicely done, and its sketching and modeling tools are context aware. Overall, it’s a far nicer user interface than most CAD users would expect. Second, Inventor Fusion has capable tools for modeling and editing both solid and surface models. While, in my experience working with Inventor Fusion, I found some files that I was unable to edit as I wished, my sense was it was more a matter of my lack of experience than Inventor Fusion’s limitation. And, third, Inventor Fusion includes a couple of tools that make it really interesting for preparing models for CAE. It has a model simplification wizard, to remove small features, and has a wizard to create fluid volumes from assemblies, for CFD. There’s quite a bit of interest among CAE people in using direct modeling CAD systems for model preparation. Autodesk has bought several CAE companies over the last several years, so it makes sense that they would include these tools in Inventor Fusion. When Autodesk gets around to charging for Inventor Fusion, they may include more with the software, or, more likely, bundle it with some of their other products. For now, as a standalone product (and one that’s free as well), it has a prominent place in my collection of tools. Solid Edge 2. D Drafting. Some day in the future, it will be common for engineers and designers to create 3. D models, and annotate them with 3. D GD& T. And never create drawings. But for now, we all love our drawings. The good 3. D MCAD systems all support the semi- automatic creation of drawing views from 3. D models, as well as model- to- drawing associativity of dimensions. But there are times when you need to create just a drawing. Without an associated model. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to create a 3. D model when a 2. D drawing will do the job. Solid Edge drawing of a worm shaft, courtesy Thorsten Hartmann. The most common 2. D CAD software is Auto. CAD. In its various incarnations, it’s the most popular CAD software in the world. It is certainly good general purpose CAD software, but it’s never been the best mechanical drafting software you could get. For really good 2.
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