Ive been enjoying using something called FreeCAD as a hobby to design a bracket for my sailboat. Alas, it ran out of gas when I asked it to compute and display the surface of a fairly straightforward multiple radii curved surface tube in 3D, (curved in three or four directions tube). Now Im looking at using this free Blender thing in addition to seeking friends with serious non-free CAD tools, to try to accomplish the required 3D solid sweeping function. blender.org/features/ Alas, all the fancy and at times very costly 3D surface modeling and solid modeling tools will be left in the dust when the skilled craftsmen at a local fabrication shop sees the problem and just goes into the shop to make the bracket that Im envisioning, using just the 2D profiles. Yet, as a means of communicating your newly imagined shape and system ideas effectively, modern day CAD and other engineering tools are essential. The easier it is to communicate complex stuff, the easier cheaper and faster it can be implemented. Great cheap CAD / CAE / etc. high tech. tools are a critical foundation block for rapid economic growth. I think society would benefit if all our public libraries were upgraded so that local retired engineers could more easily flesh out their ideas and inventions for others to build and imagine new factories for mass manufacturing and new good job creation. Also, itd be good to enable retired engineers and scientists to keep up their skills because at times we encounter national technical tragedies like forever oil leaks or other natl tech. tragedies that require ideas from as many folks as possible. So I think a pretty good civil defense & readiness argument can be made to justify such an upgrade of local libraries and perhaps also building good library to local community college to regional university connections, etc.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 16:42:15 +0000
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