how do you design your robot with exact dimensions and...

[mightymouse]

Re: how do you design your robot with exact dimensions and..

I use Solidworks at work - did a 4 day course and only covered the basics. Saying that there is so much on it you barely use 10% of it. The main feature is the ability to construct a whole assembly from individual parts - you put a hole in the wrong place you cannot assemble it in the programme. You know before you make anything it will go together. Will also give you a volume measurement for each part, combined with a relative density, gives you the weight..........

Downside....through a dealer was quoted £3000.....a year.....
There are hookey versions available but never got one working properly on my pc

My pc at work has 6gb ram on the graphics card but still slows up on large assemblies.

Despite that I love it, there is nothing you cannot do with it.

Trev

[grant_ploughbot]

Re: how do you design your robot with exact dimensions and..

I use AutoDesk Inventor - it works in a very similar way to Solidworks but I prefer some of the features and stress analysis/3D animations and genuine simulations.
Once you have the basic's of any CAD program, they all become fairly similar to use for basic things.

Here's my first play around with an animation in Inventor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9XPdtCImT4

And here's a genuine Simulation with 13kg steel block on the end of the flipper running at 20 bar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtsXdHQt3_k John Reid did that one when we were working a few things out.

And some very useful stress analysis on the flipper arm. This shows where any weak points are when the full force of the ram is pushing on it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7pe3mT6tq4

3D Cad packages really are worth learning. It will add a huge amount to your CV and employability if your looking into anything engineering/design related.

[Rahulvyas]

Re: how do you design your robot with exact dimensions and..

Nice. Thanks
Learning sometimes seems boaring, like I started watching Java tutorials so that I could learn how to create awesome apps to interface with arduino, but after watching the 11th tutorial of the series- I feel like shifting to Visual C# language because java is boaring