i wish i could do that.

 

I have no doubt you could. Those programs are pretty user friendly.

 

Chris, if I can do that, I can't imagine how awesom your work would be It's ridiculously easy to learn.

 

Arin, don't know how I missed this one.
Great work. I know how tough this can be, as I completed a 3 year
drafting and design program many moons ago.
Went to a Vo-tech school instead of a high school and that was my major program.

 

Great work! I use Art Cam Pro from Del Cam as many in here know I am sure and Surfcam. Art Cam I bought mainly because it is alot of fun to work with or as I do Play with. And there is a huge learing curve to this stuff. I dont hink it is so bad for you guys that grew up on computers but for thick heads like me It took me awhile to get to the point I am at and I have a long way to go. I also am self taught pretty much and there are no schools near me that teach it. I wouldnt mind doing an online course but I havent found any. To describe my place, basically I have alot $$$$$$$$ tied up in a hobby shop. I bought most of the equipment and software mainly because I wanted to machine out my own parts for my own cars so I can say HEY! I Built That! I will gladly bend out stock for others and under the absolute right situation I might machine out a part for someone.

Very nice work though. Too bad they wont let you save out files because I would have to do some for me.

 

Hey , now, don't go callin yourself a thickhead :P Just practice!

I mean, I know that II build is takin a boatload of time from you, but a few hours here and there can result in spectacular work. Your steering wheel design looks pretty well done to me

I envy your machine shop though. Thats sick. I know if I had one, I would have tons of custom parts on the II already. Of course all that takes time and money haha.

If you were able to get as far as you were self taught, I'm not sure how useful a class would be anyway. Some things are better left self taught.

 

Is it possible to download any type of CAD software for free? If so, from where? I'm thinking I might try my hand at this.

 

You can get Autodesk Inventor from their site for free sometimes. I know I got my copy because I'm in school.

I also got to use solidworks at school for free, when I was still at Pacific

 

This semester I ended up doing a lot of CAD for my design class. Our school uses NX 5 now, but this was all done with NX 4. For our end of term project we had to make a remote controlled vehicle for a wooden block tower building competition. Each match had two teams, 36 blocks and five minutes to build the highest tower. We ended up coming second in the whole competition.

It was fun at first, but we had to have individual drawings of every part dimensioned perfectly, and there were about 150 pages of drawings.

Earlier in the year we each built race cars for a mini mini baja competition. They had to be able to go up and down ramps and bumps and stuff, I decided to build a tank for good traction.