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EXPANDING YOUR HORIZONS

Using CAD Mechanical Software in Design Projects
by George Martin

Start ı Drawing The Line ı Scaling New Heights ı Fitting In ı Sources and PDF

At the end of every year, my projects wind down. There are fewer, smaller projects. Customers are too busy with year-end tasks to talk. However, after the first of the new year, everyoneıs budgets are in place and I restart the quoting activity. Expecting this slow down, I looked at and bid on a couple of smaller and unusual projects.

One such deal was for an industrial packaging project. Iıve always wanted mechanical CAD software in-house and this was my chance. The assignment was a simple one. I had to package a STD bus card cage, an OPTO 22 I/O panel, power supply, fan, and all of the input and output connectors. I built two prototypes for a proof of concept, so I purchased an off-the-shelf enclosure and then created the machining drawings for all of the modifications.

Two years ago, I purchased two CAD packages, Turbo CAD V.7 and Quick CAD V.7, for a 19ı cabinet design I was supposed to start at this time. That project never materialized, but at least now I was ready for this new project. Revised versions of both of these packages are now available. So, I donıt have the latest, but I donıt think Iıll upgrade just yet.

I installed the Turbo CAD software because I had some other parts to design for recreational projects I was involved with also. It has 3-D capabilities, and I purchased two of the tutorials with the original software. I worked my way through the tutorials and was ready to start an original design. The real world, however, got in the way when a large software project came along.

While working on that project, I watched an electrical design engineer use Quick CAD to design a 19ı card rack, which was just the type of project I was supposed to be doing myself. Quick CAD is basically a 2-D system capable of orthogonal views. These views let you see an object in a 3-D perspective. All in all, itıs a nice shortcut to a real 3-D system. I watched this engineer detail each part, then lay them together for an assembly drawing for the entire chassis. This proved that all of the parts would fit together.

So, when I got back to my packaging project, I started up Quick CAD. I had no tutorials and the manuals that came with the package only told me how to activate the various tools and features. There was nothing in the way of an explanation why you might want to use all of the various features of the product.

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