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First 3D Drawings with Autodesk Inventor

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Chris In Marshfield

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Supporting Member
Joined
Jan 29, 2008
Messages
1,704
Location
Northwest WI USA
Hey gang,

I've done 2D CAD for a number of years (mainly architectural, but some mechanical things), and I've finally talked myself into trying to become proficient with 3D. My desire is to put my Expedition fuselage into 3D CAD so I can run stress analysis against it after I've done the math on the truss itself, just so I can see if there are any weak spots I didn't account for. Dan R. (Pops) has already given me a few places to look, and this will help out as a second set of technical eyes.

Following the tutorials in "Autodesk Inventor 2016 - Learn by doing", I got my first two drawings turned out:

2015-12-22_16-00-59.jpg 2015-12-22_16-48-56.jpg

Inventor is a pretty cool tool! You definitely have to think a little bit differently from your 2D CAD techniques, although having that experience certainly helps. The nice thing is that Inventor can put your drawing into 2D if you'd like to see your projections, but it really excels in 3D space.

I've never used any other 3D software before, and there certainly could be better tools out there if you're a hard-core ME -- maybe Pro-E or SolidWorks. But I got this on a student discount, so I'm going to give it a go. And it's got the stress analysis tools built in, so that's cool.

Looking forward to the continuing adventure!

~Chris
 
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