Sub contracted drawings

Good morning all,

The sun is shining, a lovely start to the day.

I am looking for help with something I can't do for myself---would one of you be willing to turn my poor sketches into more professional looking CAD drawings that I can put forward into article material?

I've got the ideas and I can sketch them out OK but they do look so crude when compared to what other people can turn out; it actually puts me off writing the stuff up.

So, any offers? I'll naturally meet costs or what you might want in return

Brian

Brian have a word with Diane first, see gets all sorts sent in and usually the illustrator can do a reasonable job with them so they look presentable in the mag.

There is an advert for CAD drawing in te classifieds you may want to check out, not sure if the rates would make it worth your while though.

J

Hello Jason,

Thank you for the suggestion, but it isn't quite what I'm looking for. I know the illustrators at MTM do a decent job, but if I then wanted to go 'off piste' with the material I am bound by the ties to MTM for any illustrations. I do agree with you, a proper commercial job would be far too costly.

I am really looking for a more flexible arrangement with an individual where we can come to an agreeable arrangement which allows me the freedom to take my offerings in whatever direction I wish to pursue. At this stage there are 5 simple sketches, but who knows what the future could bring?

Regards

Brian

Did you see my PM?

Hi Brian, you have a PM from me too. JD

Hello All,

I received an email from Grahame the illustrator today:

"Regarding drawings, if you can send PDF or EPS they’re probably the most reliable formats for me to open – sometimes I can open DWG & DXF but it depends which version of which program was used to create them. I have no problem working from hand drawn scanned images, JPEG’s are fine for those."

Note that images have to be in eps to be used in the magazine, so if the originator (i.e. you) can do the conversion it makes it much easier to avoid errors. I have three programmes (Turbocad, Corel and TotalCAD) that can open DWG and DXF - but all three fall over on some files and I can't always generate a decent PDF.

But YES Grahame is quite happy to work from clear and well-scanned hand drawings.

The one thing we can't be sure of handling are CAD file types, as there seems to be no guarantee of compatibility and most programmes have flaky pdf generation.

Neil

Hi Neil,

Not sure about other CAD programs but Solidworks generates good PDF's right out of the box.

For ProEngineer/Creo and MS office programs I have used PDF995 (free trial download, or used to be) for some years with good results. You load it to the PC and it becomes a printer choice in the print menu. It uses the well known Ghostscript PDF generator utility I think, but this is transparent to the user.

Your mileage may vary... just my $0.02.

Cheers JD

I've just started learning Draftsight which is a free 2d prog from the solidworks people. Good beginner's manual, well supported, online tutorials. Give it a go- it's really not too hard once you get started. You've got nothing to lose but a little time.