TurboCAD Query: Maintaining Rendering Acrss File-types?

Nick -

Sorry, I don't see what you mean by "compromised".

I can understand you are able to make your own projects from your own isometric (3D) CAD drawings appropriately dimensioned. Some use only rough paper sketches, not "technical drawings" in any formal sense. Fine, and it does not matter in which order you make the individual parts, only the assembly order.

An orthographic elevation or plan view is not a "compromise". It is exactly as its subject is seen square-on: a coffee-mug seen horizontally across a table is a rectangle, but a circle when seen from above. They are not compromises but their physical appearances.

The engineering and architectural industries have used both orthographic and isometric drawings - first by pencil now mainly by CAD - world-wide for the past two or three hundred years without problems!

Similarly an Ordnance-Survey map is an orthographic plan view of the land; but has markings to show physical relief, from which you can plot sections, and calculate gradients and slope-lengths.

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I do take your point about complexity though. I know 'Word' and 'Excel' enough for my needs, and even wrote a book manuscript on an Amstrad word-processor (different OS); but have never used these programmes to their fullest extent. That's not by difficulty but by need. My most advanced 'Excel' use was polar graphs ('Radar Charts', MS called them); cursing the designers for calling 0º and 360º two separate points and not giving proper editing tools! I had to plot negative radial values from 0 downwards, against angles of 5º, often only 3º, increments.

TurboCAD similarly has a huge array of tools not relevant to the hobby of model-engineering as it is aimed in one package at professional architects and engineers; but my problem is of understanding the relatively few, more basic ones we do need. Perhaps not its basic "Deluxe" editions, but certainly the more powerful 'Professional' and 'Platinum' editions would allow you to draw your car engine much as you did in Fusion; albeit in different ways.

I see how you created the crank-webs, and TurboCAD's Extrusion or Thickness tools will do similarly, but I do not how I would assemble their copies to depict the complete crankshaft. I'd need use careful co-ordinate arithmetic - not the "proper", reliable way to do it.

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Ian -

Yes, my problem too! I tried Alibre Atom and later, SolidEdge, thinking they may be easier to learn; but they weren't. Also it seemed daft to start learning a totally new system when I had made at least some progress with TurboCAD.

None of it is the software's fault, and all my limited ability to learn it. The Deluxe edition I use does lack some tools you'd expect and which are in the more expensive versions; but it is still a very powerful 2D / 3D option system that allows a 3D-model-first approach to designing. In that respect it is similar to Sold Edge, Fusion and Alibre; but with very different ways to give the same results.

Only, I find those ways very hard to learn!

the computer can do that arithmetic better than you, and it already knows where the bits are and how their geometry relates to other parts. So a joint is created by specifying which features(edges, holes, centres, points, specific custom requirements etc) on the two parts need to match. Next you offset or rotate them as necessary - two joined parts don't necessarily need to touch. Then you specify how you want one part to move(or not) around another, whether that's rotate around one axis and slide along another or other simpler movements. Finally you add the limits for how far it can move.

The centre of a circle will still be a viable connection even if you make it bigger or extrude the face another 5mm. That won't be true if you calculated how far apart the original parts were.

So my crankshaft has marked joint origins at the centre of each end of the main journals. These are then mated together, and the new part rotated 90, 180 or 270° as dictated by the firing order. And if you get that wrong, changing it just a matter of editing the joint to a new number.

Yes, I know the computer is meant to do the hard work, and to extreme limits or accuracy and precision (I can never remember which is which!)

You and I though are using very different CAD programmes so although reaching the same results the tools available will be different.

I have not tried it physically but I gave the car crankshaft problem a lot of thought.

TuboCAD needs definite meeting-points, as does Fusion presumably, but if I were to draw one crank-web it has no sharp vertices to act as joint nuclei, and the centres of the pin and shaft would disappear. That is because it has become a single "solid" or a thin "surface" wrapped around a virtual cavity (depending partly on how I construct it, and there is nothing to tell which it will be).

Either way, it gains a single "Reference Point", the geometrical centre of the web's invisible, surrounding box; tangential to the curved ends and if the web is of constant thickness, hugging the two faces. That RP would be on the longitudinal centre-line of the web; but not central to the crank-throw because the ends are of different radii.

You can (but it never works for me) move the RP to become a common point in the assembly, but it needs a suitable Snap point to receive it... only our crank-web no longer has one. The shaft and pin centres have been subsumed into an entire unit, so are no longer in discrete cylinders. Your only hope is that the "corner" where the curved end meets the straight side will act as a vertex from where the web can be shuffled by distance-moves to its place.

Obviously there are ways to assemble the eight webs, 4 pins, intermediate bits of shaft and the end details, accurately and relatively easily - but I have no idea what they are.

There is a tool called "Assemble by axis" which allows concentric cylinders, cones etc to be put together, but I don't know if it would work here, and anyway it is not given in my edition of TurboCAD!

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Similarly when we come to wrap the big-ends round the crank-pins: the shaft no longer has discrete axes or vertices to which the connecting-rod can be linked. Again, it is obviously possible - this is a full-scale industrial CAD system after all - but not at all obvious to me.

It seems to me I'd have to draw the crankshaft element by element from one end, being careful not to Add or Subtract any one from another until it is finished, because those Boolean changes are among the operations that turn the two affected entities into one solid (or "surface".

It's also fatal to try to separate such a solid / surface into its original shapes. Cylinders are actually umpteen-facetted prisms and any of many possible false moves will disintegrate them into their individual facets. Unless you promptly use the "Redo" editing command to cancel the move anyway, they cannot be re-assembled.

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I have drawn the crankshaft for my steam-lorry engine and added the eccentric sheaves, but orthogonally, so it was easy to put together. It's just rectangles in front elevation, rectangles and circles in end view. Even if modelled in 3D I'd still need the elevations because TurboCAD does not seem to dimension 3D models. A coloured 3D drawing requires great CAD skill but without dimensions it is useless in the machine-shop!

Instead TurboCAD uses its desperately difficult "Viewports" system. Though mainly for transferring the image from screen to paper, it can also create dimensioned 2D elevations from your selected orthogonal views of the 3D model. If you can drive it correctly it even keeps the dimension values irrespective of scaling the image itself to the paper that fits your printer. I did not have that model so just printed the 2D drawings.

My crankshaft can certainly be drawn in 3D, plus the rest of the engine, in fact the whole vehicle, in TurboCAD. However, though I had originally hoped learning such advanced techniques, modelling even just that single, simple two-throw crankshaft in 3D is for the experts, not lesser mortals like me!

Hi Nigel,

I am going to struggle wording this. There are words inside my head, but whether or not I can get them into some order is the thing.

Do you need 3D to show you what an object would look like, and how it would interact with other objects that make up a whole. Like a crankshaft and its con-rods for instance? Or do you need a cad programme to design the single entities within a construction from which you can determine where they need to be to fit properly, and to which you can add or construe dimensions?

Sometimes when I draw something and then draw something else that would interact with it, I.E, a crank and con-rod, I will draw the crank then discover it needs to be in a different place or size to accomodate the con-rod or piston or crankcase, all of which can change the crankshaft.

As I said earlier, words in my head, but making sense of them is another thing!

Lee

I see me as the machine's designer, the 3D model helping me design it, the elevations from that to guide making the parts.

The value to me of a 3D model is that of helping ensure things do fit and work together: I decide the dimensions but then assemble them pictorially basically to ensure the dimensions are right.

Its main purpose would be then as General Arrangements, of sub-assemblies if not of the entire thing.

For example...

I am part way through trying to lay out the transmission for my steam-lorry: vertical engine directly driving a 2-speed gear that encloses the driving chain-sprocket. The engine location and the chain run are set - in fact I made the back axle years ago although it still needs completing in details.

The drawing of that area of the chassis is orthographic but if I could model in 3D it would make it easier to see just what lies where, and what room is left for such things as the boiler feed-pump and plumbing. Also, because a miniature steam-wagon five feet long is an awkward so-and-so to operate, where to put the floor cut-outs for the driver's feet!

The engine is partly located by the crankshaft and the cylinders; and the nearside end of the crankshaft has somehow to drive a simple (?) gear cluster and the pump. Its short off-side end holds the flywheel, which in turn has to avoid the steering-gear and wherever my foot-rest decides to go. This lot is further constrained by the tapered portion of the chassis, necessary for the Ackermann-steered front wheels' clearance. Oh, and the hand-brake gear needs live down there somewhere too.

(Such as it is: the brakes on the original were crude to say the least; just a curved steel pad pulled against the smooth, solid steel tyre of each hind wheel.)

There are no drawings for this thing! I can't ring up Blackgates or MJ Engineering, bank-card in hand, and buy a plan set. All I have is some old photos of the prototypes and rough idea of the leading dimensions, I started it long ago, have spent far too long with many major interruptions, and have to "design" it as I go. That often means correcting design errors built in ten or twenty years ago; and even re-making parts within months: the ash-pan now on there is Version 3.

My impetus for buying a CAD package was to help this project, and I bought TurboCAD simply because it was the only proper engineering CAD system available to model-engineers at the time.

I have tried a 3D model of the vehicle but it became too difficult. I could not draw the wheels properly, and had to omit the springs and steering. I'd' also omitted things like the seats and engine casing, which are just 3 rectangular boxes.

Nigel.

I've put together a little video of one way you could make a simple crankshaft in MoI. I used a few of the tools in MoI to give an idea of its ease of use. To Copy the crank web I pressed CTRL whilst holding & dragging the left mouse button and to rotate the 3D view I held the right mouse button.

I can't see how 3D modelling could be much easier than this, especially for the way you say you want to work.

MoI is $295 and is yours forever - no cloud storage and no mandatory updates. New versions seem to be released every 3 to 4 years and currently cost $100 for the update

Martin.

Thankyou Martin,

but the rigmarole the system demanded, put me off. I didn't know what I would be letting me in for by signing up to this, that and the other. So I have not seen the video.

However I believe your judgement of MoI. I have seen the initials bandied about but I failed to find out anything about it. There are YouTube videos demonstrating it but the retailer's web-site appears to be out of action. (I practically gave up on Yewtoob after Google ruined it!)

I should add I cannot learn anything from videos. They seem to be of experts doing difficult things easily, not instructing me how to do them myself.

'

I am wary of trying CAD systems new to me because I would have to learn them from scratch, and I have already made some progress with TurboCAD, which cost me good money. I have probably reached my natural limit with it, but equally probably I'd advance no further with any other make.

If I try anything else it would probably be Solid Edge (CE) again, while bits of it are still in my mind. Its problem for me was its own tutorial exercises do not form the continuum they are supposed to be. Also, they do not explain arcane Siemens concepts like "synchronous" and "ordered", in Siemens-speak (not their real meanings).

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Perhaps 3D CAD modelling is too hard for me, but I can use TurboCAD in 2D mode just about well enough for my own use. Although it still needs care because IMSI seems to try make you use TurboCAD in 3D mode.

The 3D stuff is still there, if I want to try again at some point, or for simple, rather rough pictures like this, in TC 2019 Deluxe, of one of my steam-lorry's cross-heads. I had designed them from raw castings I'd bought on a rally stall, and drew them orthographically. I made this rendering separately, much later, after making the real parts.

That's completely amazing.

Ha-bloomin'-Ha....

It took me a couple of goes to work out what to press to start the video, as I had been selecting the title and that opens the 'Vimeo' host - or whatever 'Vimeo' is - hence my comment about accounts.

Yes, MoI looks simpler than TurboCAD would be to draw that same crank, but I could not follow most of it. It was too fast for that. Like all such videos it is of some bloke, Eddie Walker here, rushing through what he finds easy.

I tried to watch how he placed the tangential sides of the web, and the crank-pin on its centres on the webs, but it was all too quick and flashy, and the drawing had no obvious snap points or equivalents.

'

However I would gain nothing by trying to change system now. I would have to start learning the new one right from scratch, and fear I would spend more time trying to learn to use it, than using it.

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I spent a while this evening trying to model my lorry wheels in 3D. The cylindrical hub carries two flanged steel plates (welded flanges: the originals were probably pressed), slightly coned, surrounded by a thick shock-absorbing (says the patent) inner wooden tyre, and plain steel outer tyre. The plates, 2mm thick on the model, are rose-pierced: 6 triangular holes with rounded corners.

I started the drawing with the hub, some distance across the TurboCAD "Model Space" from the 3D model of the vehicle itself.

It took a while to place the shallow spigot on each end, to locate the plates, by co-ordinates that seem to keep drifting, the lack of snap points and continual work-plane problems. The real hubs had been basic turning.

Unable to plot the dishing, I decided to leave the plates flat in the drawing. I had dished the real ones quite easily, by screwing them down to a jig before welding their flanges on.

One plots the 6 cut-outs by drawing just one as a polyline, thickening it, radially copying it then subtracting them all from the disc. Rather than trying to drawing the master one with rounded corners, I chose to leave them sharp, as in clock wheels. Even then I was unable to keep the construction-lines on the same plane no matter what I did, so they would not intersect in all 3 dimensions, so could not work. The real steel discs had been easy to mark out and drill on a rotary-table.

Fruitless. I closed the file without saving the changes.

It had been easier to draw the wheels (12.7" dia rear, 10.5" dia front) on paper, and make them, than to model them in 3D CAD!

I've wrecked my A0 drawing-board stand by dismantling it, thinking I would never need it again.... Oh dear.

That bloke Eddie Walker (don't ask), was actually me. I made the video to try and help you get into 3D modelling in an easy way.

I suggest you watch the video at full size (click the 4-arrow icon next to the V in the lower right corner) and pausing playback might help too.

With regard to the tangential sides of the web. If you look carefully you'll see small visual hints appear onscreen, such as Tan, Perp and Int etc. Whenever these are visible, they indicate how the line you are drawing will be attached - so if you're drawing a line roughly tangential from one circle to another, Tan will be displayed at the intersection of both ends of the line and a perfect tangent will be made. This is how I attached the angled sides of the crank web to the small trimmed circle - look for Tan & Int while I'm drawing these angled lines.

You will also see small crosses (x), which are snap points, appear on parts of the model as the mouse pointer nears them. You can attach lines, curves and solids to these points just by placing the mouse pointer over them and clicking - you can drag items to them as well.It's simple and powerful.

Also, clicking the onscreen Help button takes you directly to the reference of whichever tool or function you have selected. Very handy.

There's an easy to use (90day) download here. if you are interested.

Martin.

Edited By blowlamp on 14/04/2023 00:46:35

Nigel not that it wil do anygood as we just end up with the same discussion every couple of months that we have had now for a few years but along the bottom of the Vimeo screen is the common "cog icon" used for settings click that and you will be able to adjust playback speed just as anyone else can on Youtube etc though not sure it will go slow enough

Afraid another video for you, use the "cog" icon bottom right to set playback speed. This is a similar shape crank to what Blowlamp shows done in Alibre and I also go on to assemble it as a 4 throw crank and briefly produce a 2D drawing at the end. Couple of pauses as the screen recorder was slowing things down

Bit different to MOI but the basic principals are the same just stacking up simple 2D shapes each of which is extruded to give the 3rd dimension. Mirroring and using the same items multiple times makes quick work

It is a pity there is nobody on the forum with the same version of AC that you have it would be good to see someone draw the crank, even in a better version it may give you some guidance. Can you post a picture of the wheel as it doe snot sound too hard to draw, either an original or what you have made.

Wheel

Hub - simple 2D half section mirrored and then rotated about central axis

Disc - dishing best dealt with by drawing a section and then revolving. Cutout fillet shown being added to the 2D shape and also directly to the 3D model to show both methods. Bolt holes simple circle and circular pattern

Wood rim and tyre just two circles extruded.

All 2D sketches done on basic planes or directly on an existing surface so no worries about line snot meeting up

Assembly mate faces, concentric constraint to a bolt hole and central axis

Edited By JasonB on 14/04/2023 10:30:30

Thank you Martin.

I was a bit puzzled about the video's author after you has said something having putting it together!

I did notice the snap points appear at times, but although I was watching it carefully probably missed some of them.

'

Thankyou for that tip Jason, about video speeds. I'd not known that as I rarely watch videos - of any sort.

EDIT inserted here: Sorry - your two videos appeared after I had written and posted this so I have not yet viewed them. I see you use the word "constrained" at one point. I know that is a definite CAD term but one not used in TurboCAD, which may have some equivalent under another name though. You also refer to mirror copying: that is available and the whole wheel could be modelled that way because all four on my engine are two fully symmetrical pairs. (I have put the differential and chain-sprocket on the axle inboard of the spring, Foden style, not on one of the wheels as a photograph obtained years later suggests was original.)  Nor does my edition of TC have the fillet tool available in the more expensive editions.

'''''''''''

For instruction manuals, I prefer static forms (printed or pdf displays), as came with my copy of TurboCAD 2019 (CD), and as Siemens uses (web-site). Or indeed of course, the MEW introduction to Alibre.

This is only partly having been put off videos by their presentations, an on YouTube by the childish advertisement breaks.

My main reason is that I can follow static steps at my own speed, and can easily look back if necessary; although it is awkward using both a pdf document and the exercise itself on a single screen.

You joke about my being slow to learn CAD. It's not just CAD. It is anything, especially academic; and always so despite an early clinical assessment of unusually high IQ (says my NHS records - surely a measurement error!).

I also grasp topics within each field in an oddly, randomly but rigidly compartmental way. So for example, despite having drawn that sectioned cross-head as I did, I might not be able to use whatever is necessary to give it the connecting-rod.

Just as in Maths, I can understand 3D graphs but never matrices - though there is a significant difference. 3D graphs can, and CAD models do, both depict real things whereas matrices are pure abstractions with no real-world meanings.*

Hence my needing a fixed, step-by-step approach I cannot find in a video, gears or not, even in 1st gear & low-range 4WD.

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Many my early 3D attempts were basic exercises I invented to explore just two or three tools at a time, such as joining two rectangular blocks together and putting holes of set sizes in set locations through them. The cross-head was another exercise: I'd already made the real ones! Someone suggested using components from published plans as exercises - a good idea because if the elevations derived from the 3D images then match the original, orthographic drawings the CAD model must be right!

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*(I know Matrices have found a real but very arcane use. They are in computer programmes solving vast volumes of extremely advanced calculations in certain dynamic stress and vibration analyses; but that is all for professional specialists at PhD level and above. Such as the Doctor of Mathematics who tried to help me understand them. So I am very surprised matrices are where I first heard of, and was baffled by, them as mere puzzles in the GCSE school maths syllabus I studied in evening-class about 30 years ago.)

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 14/04/2023 11:24:21

That video is largely how I made my crank. And it's done in eight minutes.

While it shows the steps required, it's a demonstration and not the tutorial Nigel needs to correct his misconceptions of how the program works. From what he's written many times, that tutorial needs to be face to face so that the explanations and resulting questions can be answered immediately without adding extra misunderstanding. That would probably make for a thirty minute session.

But if I was running the tutorial, instead of random exercises I would use the three examples he's already struggled with: the chassis rails, pumps and wheels. That would give a solid grounding in all the aspects of how and why to use either 2D or 3D base sketches, dimensions and constraints, extrudes, revolves, construction planes, projected geometry from already created and matching parts, joints etc, using parts he already understands and needs.

That's an afternoon, or preferably a couple of evening sessions helped along with beer, chocolate cake or whatever he prefers in such situations.

First item on the agenda would be a mind-wipe of anything to do with TurboCad!

Edited By Nick Wheeler on 14/04/2023 12:42:27

You do have constraints in TC, here is a non video user guide the icons are very similar to those used in Alibre and all the other popular CAD packages. eg one circle inside another makes two circles concentric or // makes two lines or edges parallel and so on.

Are you pulling our legs Nigel? In the middle of a CAD learning question, we're suddenly treated to an attack on matrices.

If not a joke, seems to confirm this is a mindset problem - considerable intelligence being applied to prevent learning rather than achieve anything. Brain used to dismiss options and deploy smokescreens rather than exploit opportunities. Videos are no good, products don't work as they should, manuals aren't organised properly, courses are too expensive, teaching examples aren't in the right order, forum help denied, refusing the need to grasp the basics, insistence on applying inappropriate previous knowledge, and more.

Now, based on a struggle with GCSE maths 30 years ago, Nigel jumps to incorrect conclusions about matrices: "very arcane", "extremely advanced", "for professional specialists at PhD level and above" etc. Note the pejorative language: "very arcane" is much more convincing than the ordinary arcane. And apparently because matrices weren't grasped 30 years ago, Nigel is "very surprised" to find they are still taught as "mere puzzles". I feel sand is being thrown in my eyes!

The truth is matrices are just another useful mathematical tool. May not be needed in most workplaces, but still highly valuable. Good for solving many different technical problems and particularly suited to any requiring lots of computerised number-crunching. Decent weather forecasts require billions of sums, but matrices are used by TurboCAD rotate and transform 3D objects in memory, and then project them on to a 2D computer screen. Computer graphics require lots of arithmetic to be done very quickly, so software engineers often go for matrix solutions. The end-user doesn't need to know or care.

I've always accepted engineering is full of stuff I personally don't understand that is wonderfully useful. I want to know more. Learning is horribly difficult though, therefore I feel it's important not to sabotage myself with irrelevant opinions and excuses. Above all, I never decide in advance that anything is "impossible" or give up too quickly.

I think Nigel is more than capable of cracking 3D-CAD. The problem is he insists on doing it his way which, unfortunately, is wrong. Despite many failures, Nigel doesn't see his approach is flawed, so he always steers into the ditch and gets stuck. Blaming matrices, adverts in Youtube videos, or anything else won't help! I think the answer is a tutor - someone to keep Nigel on track through the basics. After that I'm sure Nigel could tackle advanced work on his own.

Dave

Dave -

I object to that allegation that I blame anything except me. NO! Just the opposite. I blame only me.

Also to being totally mis-read and told how I think!

The maths example shows it's not only CAD I find hard, and that I learn complicated subjects only in discrete "boxes", not in their entirety, leaving big gaps. One my Maths teachers at school observed that. I found out only from his Report, as he never offered to help anyone who found maths hard, just discouraged them.

I knew only that use for matrices from the scientist who tried to help me understand them. I have never seen them in anything simpler, so naturally associate them only with professional mathematics far above the simple mensuration and trigonometry in model-engineering. In turn she failed to understand why I could not learn them. I said, "Sorry, but you've only repeated the instructions". No explanations or more down-to-Earth applications.

Not their fault. Certainly not her fault Just Nature and my brain! At least CAD has a reason for me: designing things I can make.

I do NOT "Insist" on doing it my way. It do it its way, as far as I can. Any computer application can only work if you use its way - I've used them often enough. The difficult bit is learning that way.

I do NOT decide in advance if anything is impossible, certainly not out of hand. I assess that only after either failing several tries, or by using my experience to judge my skill and chance of success.

'

So very wrong in some things but you are right about tuition. It would have to be personal, singly or as I was taught MS-DOS, Windows, 'Word', 'Excel' and 'Access'. Admittedly all "Introductory" courses, but properly with each having a PC and issued, printed notes.

Even so, I learnt from the associated text-books to use my first home PC, an Amstrad PCW9512 with its "CPM" OS, well enough to write a book and to teach myself basic BASIC - used for all our locally-written laboratory programmes at work.

Formal courses are only for the trade and academia, mainly AutoDesk (AutoCAD & Fusion) and SolidWorks; though my local college offers a 2-day AutoCAD 2D course.

Paul Tracey offers various TurboCAD materials, interestingly suggesting that for 3D TC will also help people learning SolidWorks, which he says is very similar. I also found his warning of the difference between the surface-plotting Deluxe and other, solid-generating, versions of TC; which explains the former's limitations.

With no-one to tell me which buttons to press, I am back to self-teaching.

I looked at TurboCAD. This sells tuition materlals at quite reasonable prices. Oddly it does not list TC 2021, (my version) which may or may not matter. The important tools are probably the same though not all are included in all editions. I am not sure if video, .pdf or both. I'd have to enquire.

Nigel.

Why not download MoI and give it a go (Free for 3 Months)? It will cost you nothing but the effort.

Martin.

Martin -

A good point!

Thankyou Jason.

I've just viewed your two videos. I am impressed!

The speeds were not too bad, and I left them alone; but couldn't enlarge the pictures quite enough for full legibility of the labels without then losing them into the pixels.

Never mind - I got the gist of it. Alibre looks slightly similar to Solid Edge, I think, but might be a little simpler to use. A lot less complicated than TurboCAD as well.

I like the way it puts the object on translucent planes to help you see what's happening, especially when you turn it back and forth. Some objects can create strange optical illusions or lose your sense of direction if your turn them to odd angles, so having those fixed planes keeps track of where it is.

And that parts file system - you can probably do that in any CAD package in its own way but Alibre's way does seem to make for easier assembling, and especially if some parts are common to more than one assembly. I think Alibre has extended the concept of 'blocks' here, without needing call them that, simplifying the process.

Can you re-scale those so the shapes are the same but the overall size smaller, between assemblies? (E.g. traction-engine front wheels copied onto a trailer at a different diameter).

I noticed you used the revolve tool (I may have mis-remembered the name, but it was a bit difficult to read anyway) to make the hub from a rectilinear figure. Are the dimensions active, so typing the value into the little box makes the line that size? I assume on the dimensioned views, there is a way to ensure the dimensions use consistent datum points and directions?

The assembling looked confusing but I did spot the use of the stud-holes on the wheels as alignment points. That's a neat way to "drill" the holes through - extrusions back through the solid, as if of negative lengths.

The wheel you drew is pretty well as mine. The plates converge rather than diverge towards the rim but that's unimportant here. It is just a matter of forming them "up" instead of "down". The construction of the individual plate on the drawing would otherwise be the same.

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[To make the real plates, I used the 3/16" holes they have all round the rim between the piercings and the edge. In time these will hold rivets (or slotless screws and domed nuts). I made a heavy steel plate disc with corresponding 2BA holes, and a central hole that held the hub. I screwed the pierced plate to the hub by the holes you show, located that on the jig then carefully, systematically screwed the rim down by the appropriate amount. I must have had some arrangement for depth control but I forget what! I tack welded the rolled strip flanges on, then removed the plate from the jig for full welding, on the outside so I could clean the joint and the weld would be hidden on full assembly. The lack of an internal fillet - the pressing radius on the full-size - is not particularly noticeable. The steel tyres - and the smokebox - are actually slices cut from pipeline scraps, so the front wheels are a little under-scale but not too seriously - the archive photos show many detail differences between specimens anyway! ]