David says:

I’ve just read MEW #238 and saw your comment about the latest X3 mill 3D pdf model in the “ Visit our Website” box on page 7 : “It is worth taking a look to see …”. If you care to put the attached model of “Minnie” up on the website it might provide something more detailed for readers to explore. The model lacks the steering chains and winch cable which are hard to draw but is otherwise complete (I think/hope!). I think that the best settings in the pdf viewer are “White lights” and “Solid outline” but the “Illustration” setting also produces very neat line drawings.

Len Mason's Minnie

Click on the image above to view the 3D PDF model.

My original motivation for re-drafting Minnie using 3D CAD was as a learning exercise for Geomagic Design but there should be wider uses for the resulting model. In particular I can see a way of making designs more accessible to beginners and non-engineers by the use of the pdf files, exploded views, 3D renderings of components and assemblies and other features of 3D CAD such as  motion modelling. An additional gain would be that the solid models would be directly usable to produce CNC control files – having a set of these would be equivalent to owing the patterns for castings.

If the model was available on the website then we could start a thread to discuss all this.