Design Programmes

[glassspares]

Hi hope someone can help me i'm looking at a little car project and hope someone could point me in the direction of a programme or website that I could use to mock up some designs. No previous experience of using them so easier the better thanks in advance.

[ugg10]

If you haven't used a 3D CAD system in the past then I would dare to say there are no easy ones out there, they all need time invested in learning the principles of parametric modelling, thinking in 3D space and how to generate objects using the tool set. It is totally different to using a painting or drawing package. That said if you are willing to put in the effort then most of the knowledge is transferable between packages.

Best bet is to do a search for free cad software and download a few and have a go through the tutorials and see which one suits you best.

If you are a student or have a student in the house then Autocad is free, others include Rhino (free but has limited saves IIRC) and Blender which are more graphics orientated than mechanical cad, Freecad is an opensource packge and Google have their own Sketchup (probably a good place to start).

if you are after 2D Drafting then again there are quite a few free ones about, download them and have a go.

Hope this helps.

[glassspares]

Cheers for the info will have a look and download a few only one way to learn.

[dandare]

If you shortlist some 3D software, then do a YouTube search for tutorials. It can give you an idea of how the systems are used.

Some examples of software:
Siemens UG NX (very good, but pricey)
Dassault Systems Catia (ditto)
Pro-Engineer (probably ditto)
Solid Works (don't know, but heard it's pretty good)

[joe58]

If you wanted to do 'proper car bodies' then it's either Autodesk Alias Automotive or Catia V5. If purchasing both these are super duper expensive. Plus damn hard to learn. It will take quite a while to learn and you can't just walk up to them and make a car.

However you can get Blender as opensource software and I don't know if it's as powerful with it's continuity tools( the joining of surfaces with one another to create seamless transitions). But's it's free and you can learn on it and I think can be built using NURBS like Alias.


However something like a tubular chassis and engine positions could easily be mocked up on Google Sketch Up.

[anonymous-user]

A lot of the choice will come down to what you actually want to do with the CAD data? If it's just a "mock up" tool, to speed up the placement and dimensioning of critical components, then something like sketch up etc give a good return for the shallow learning curve. However, they don't support and CAM data output. For example, if you want to get the body bucks 3d milled, from the surfacing data, that's going to take a much more powerful (and expensive) S/W suite....

[dandare]

joe58 said:

If you wanted to do 'proper car bodies' then it's either Autodesk Alias Automotive or Catia V5. If purchasing both these are super duper expensive. Plus damn hard to learn. It will take quite a while to learn and you can't just walk up to them and make a car.

However you can get Blender as opensource software and I don't know if it's as powerful with it's continuity tools( the joining of surfaces with one another to create seamless transitions).

Siemens UG NX (as used by General Motors, Mercedes, and a few racing teams) is at least as good as Catia (I prefer it because it's more flexible and the naming of functions makes more sense due to it being originally developed in English whereas Catia has been translated from French so you get the typical "Google translate" problems).

Alias never used to be good for producing anything, but I don't know how it is now. The data was always converted into UG NX, Catia, or Pro-Engineer for high quality models. Alias was a bit better (and faster) for pretty pictures that the management like to see, but not good enough for manufacture.

Yes, they are all expensive, but you can get others to do the work for you. There are websites similar to EBay where people bid to do work for you, pretty cheaply, if you're lucky.

I don't know anything about Blender, but I thought that was a rendering program?

[glassspares]

Thanks for all your replies slowly working my way through a few programmes and learning along the way but appreciate your responses.

[Mr2Mike]

For basic 3D stuff it's hard to beat Sketchup. Simple to use and free for non-commercial use.

[loveice]

When you say 'mock up a design', do you mean styling part of design (exterior/interior design) or engineering part of design (from engine to chassis to body panel datas used for manufacturing in the later days)?

They are very different kind of design, which use totally different softwares.

If you are talking about styling. Then, there isn't really a so called design software. In the automotive industry there're only modelling softwares, such as Alias which is used by every single car manufactures to do the digital modelling after design before clay. Automotive design has always been done by free hand sketching... That's where most of small kit/low volume car manufactures have gone wrong.

If you are talking about engineering/manufacturing, then Catia is the one every manufacture uses.

Racing is different matter...