Official Luthiers Forum!

Here's a free offer from the folks at PTC (ProEngineer) on their Cocreate package. This is easily worth twice the price
I haven't used this particular product of theirs, but they are a very well established CAD company that popularized solid modeling starting back in the late 80's. I would expect this to have great functionality even if it is striped down. It's not Pro Engineer however.

Just thought I'd pass this on if anyone is looking for a free cad package.

http://www.ptc.com/offers/tryout/pe2.htm

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Thanks Jim.

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Aoibeann

Hi Jim

I crossed over to the MAC a year ago and promised myself I would never return to Windows. I have not found any good programs for teh MAC yet. I would be interested in seeing some output if you have any.

John

Thanks for the heads up and link Jim - I've downloaded it and will give it a go - looks like it might be very useful!

Cheers,
Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

http://www.turbocad.com

The Mac version is not bad and pretty cheap as well.


Regards,

Edzard

Not cheap, but for 2-d on a Mac the best I've found is PowerCadd:
http://www.engsw.com/
Tops for 3-D modeling is Form•Z:
http://www.formz.com/
They have a new lower priced product out called Bonzai as well.
-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

They're making Rhino for the Mac now. For what it does, there's nothing better. It is still in some sort of invitation beta, though. Google it and apply for the beta?

Some people have had good luck running Rhino and MOI3D (which I also highly recommend as the 2nd best thing to Rhino) in Parallels. I ran Rhino in Parallels for a couple months until I finally canned OSX. Apparently the new VMWare product might have better performance than Parallels.

Wow, the pricing on the Mac-native software is insane!

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

It hasn't been particularly useful to me for luthiery stuff, but Google Sketchup is a very cool (free) program, and super easy - up and running in minutes. Seems to be better for planar type things though.

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Mike Lindstrom

John, I have other cad packages I use. I just knew about the free offer and thought I'd make sure anyone here who was interested in this kind if thing knew too. So in short, I have no output to show from it.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I have taught with PTC products - and checked out Co-create last year. The nice thing about PTC is the amount of supporting material that a person can find.

I also have used Sketch-up and found it extremely easy to use.

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Ken Bremer
Madison, Wisconsin
http://www.bremerguitar.blogspot.com

Thanks, Jim.

I use the ultra-inexpensive DesignCAD 3D, and always use it in 2D mode to draw guitar parts, jigs, and designs - because using it in 3D is so clunky. I also tried to get along with trueSpace for modeling and rendering, importing DXF files in and extruding shapes, but that was too difficult too. I played with Rhino a bit (I was in with the original beta testers, and they surprised me when they offered nothing to the testers when the first version came out, so it's too expensive for a tinkerer.)

Anyway, I just downloaded CoCreate and will try it when I have time. I note that with the "personal" (free) version, an assembly could have 60 parts. Hmmmmmm.... that ought to build a guitar (if sub-assemblies like tuners and maybe frets are left off.) Thanks for the link!

Dennis


Screen sample: http://www.develop3d.com/uploaded_image ... 758360.png

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

On a somewhat related note, I had not even looked at the Caligari site (the authors of trueSpace) for quite a long time, and was curious, so I took a look. (trueSpace is a 3D modeling/animation program.)

It appears they were bought out by Microsoft, and now Microsoft plans to abandon or ignore the software to death. Very surprisingly, the latest version is FREE. (I paid $500 for the software, a few versions ago.) It ain't Lightwave, but it does have very good 3D rendering capability. Before the website disappears altogether, it might be worth the time to download the full free 7.6 version of the trueSpace software.

Dennis

http://www.caligari.com/

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

(this is not my 3D modeling work)

I had dreams of getting good enough at a 3D modeling application to create "visual prototypes" of new instruments before committing the time to molds, etc.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Pardon me while I chuckle a tad. Every thing you said is true ProE is and Solid Works are among the big three that popularized solid modeling in the 80. This is a true statement.

However I have to laugh because the funny thing is that another Cad company actually developed solid modeling in 1974. And for a while this company dominated the high end Cad market. Basically because the company that developed and retailed this Cad software was also the biggest buyer of high end 3D solid capable Cad packages.

Unfortunate for that Cad software and hardware division of the parent company that I speak of, were very short sighted. You see they took dim view of the possible use of PC (as in desk top CPU) ever having a place in the high end Cad market. They wrongly assumed that 3D Cad stations would always require mainframes and big expensive workstation cpu’s So at the end of 70s they found them self with the best Cad program out there but at a hardware cost far to great to support, and by the mid 80’s they sold out to one of the companies that became one of the top three we know today.

By the way the parent company still makes great aircraft. Can anyone name the company I am speaking of?

Here is a hint to my question. The Cad division of the parent company was calld MaCado Unigraphics. Once they sold out the name became just Unigraphics for a while. So who is the original parent company?

Hey Michael,
I assume you're talking about the Mcdonnell Douglas / Unigraphics relation ship. It get's a little convoluted along the way however being bought and sold and all that. I was working for MD out of college back in the early 80's and one of the funny things at that time is that MD didn't actually use much Unigraphics. They pretty much only had a few seats around to help with the marketing of UG. They had a very nice in-house developed CAD system that they primarily used that was really great, especially when came to surfacing/lofting functions. It ran on Evans and Sutherland hardware which was really $$$, we had these big "cad cities" scattered though out the facility and you hoped you could find an open terminal to work on. I'm sure that UG eventually took over in MD however as the hardware was lot cheaper and they really started developing the software. Sadly McDonnell Douglas no longer exist as Boeing bought them out.
Northrop had a great in-house developed system also. There was a lot of great CAD stuff going on in the mid 70's and 80's BTW. It was just spendy as you pointed out.
The bigger player back then than UG would of been ComputerVision however, another capable system, but neither of these were solid modelers ( I was careful to use the term "solid modeler" not Cad in my orignal post BTW ), they were all 3D wire and surface based systems.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I stumbled on thsi - not tried yet

http://sketchup.google.com/

What is a very capable cad program, usefull for luthierie and other woodworking and how much should I expect to invest?

Thanks,

Mike

I took Bob G's advice and went with MOI 3D. Other than some very limited 2D work in Sketchup a few years ago, I previously had zero CAD experience. After a couple days of playing around I was able to make some decent 3D models.

Pros:
~$200 although there will be an upgrade (not mandatory I believe) coming soon for an additional $100.
30 day unlimited trial (or unlimited use, but save is disabled - your choice)
Easy to learn interface (Very similar to Rhino - but much easier on my eyes)
Good forum support - the developer replies to most posts unless other experts have chimed in first.

Cons:
Not as full featured as Rhino, but also not as expensive - unless you get the student discount from Rhino.
Support documents are a little skimpy, so you might have to figure out some things on your own. For example I just figured out how to enter measurements in fractions.
MOI has only been around for a few years, so the forum can sometimes be a little quiet.

What he said. The only three CAD programs I think matter are Moi3D, Rhino, and SolidWorks. Everything else is less capable for more money.

For most guitar stuff, my workflow is entirely in Rhino. In industrial design stuff, or parts with variations, I like to use Solidworks in conjunction with Rhino.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Bombardier?

Interesting stuff.

Why not archive the thread in the "CNC and Lutherie" forum so that we can find it when we need it?

I went to the Rhino site and they had all kinds of add-ons (Penguin... etc).

I don't believe I need animation, and cartoons, but lighting would be good. Rhino and Flamingo? Or is just basic Rhino enough? And, what does Brazil do that Flamingo does not?

Mike

You only need Rhino unless you feel you need to make commercial-quality renderings. Rhino has an alright rendering engine built in, it's just not as nice as Flamingo or Brazil. The basic package is all you'll ever need for guitar and woodworking design (it's all I've ever needed!).

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Bob, one you dump the $900 on this program, do you get less expensive updates? Or do you have to keep giving them the big bucks?

Also, thinking down the road, are there plugins for generating G-code?

Mike