Finally getting down to business with sketchup

[jacq01]

    Martin,

    your fight with progress in engineering and drafting I very well understand. Remember CAD is only a tool to produce information from which parts are being made.

    As launch manager for exterior and interior of various Volvo models I was less interested in the possibilities of CAD than in the ability to get a large amount of parts to fit within the produced tolerances of the parts, the tolerances of the assembly jigs and the manual assembly abilities in the line.
The art to produce the correct information is the pride of every draftsman, while it is less important for the production, purchase, process or the testing departements. The way Marc's parts turned out shows he investigated the complete proces and went one step beyond the standard draftsman practice and produced the part in a production solution. He optimised, like a draftsman of a supplier, the part drawings for the materials and machines to be used.

Jacq

[JohnP]

Martin, there is not a single human being who uses or even knows all parts of Microsoft Office. I don't think it is possible. It makes sense CAD drafters would use only certain parts of software to get the job done. TurboCAD comes with house wall and window bits that I'll never use.

200,000 DM/year! I wonder what that would be in Euros/dollars now.

John

[RoughboyModelworks]

Martin:

I did some work with Maya a few years ago (aeons in computer software time). It's a fabulous piece of software but not aimed towards technical/architectural/product design CAD and I found it difficult to use. The entire nurbs modelling concept seems counter-intuitive to me and beyond my comprehension. My frustrations with Maya eventually led me to Ashlar-Vellum Cobalt which is the 3D CAD software I use. Maya's primary markets are animation, computer gaming and film compositing/CG where it's used extensively and to great effect. In concert with Alias it's used to animate design visualizations and expand rendering and compositing functions. You need a very powerful graphics computer to be able to get it up to speed. It's put out by Autodesk, same company that puts out Alias, Autocad and 3DS Max.

Paul

[RoughboyModelworks]

Of course, I was told I was too old to retrain back in 2002, when I was 49.
Martin

I trust you told them to go get stuffed...

Paul

[DaKra]

I've come to the conclusion that technology in this hobby/business basically goes two ways.  

It can dumb things down and make more products more accessable to more users.   That's what we've seen with Craftsman Kits.  They aren't much different from the Craftsman Kits of the 1950s, except a robot has done most of the hand cutting for you, and practically anyone can start up a kit factory.   Craftsmanship is optional.    

Or high tech can enhance craftsmanship by making the impossible possible, increasing precision, miniaturization, and basically raising standards.  One very clear example is with plastic ship models on exhibit at IPMS shows.   Before photo etch, they were little more than toys, but now they are scale models of ships.   As technology pushed the limits of what was possible in the standard 1/700 and 1/350 scales, it also raised standards generally, ultimately leading to an improvement of traditional hand skills like painting and assembly to match the refinement of the parts.  

Its all the new possibilities that make me excited about 3d printing and SL etc.   I see Hauks PaP experiment and see potential.  Anyway, its pointless to argue against the march of technology, better to take advantage of it.      

Dave
   

[Hector Bell]

Paul, I reminded them that it was their f***ing loss and that they'd just lost a bloody good man! 
Then our house was broken into and in a fit of pique, my wife said, "Right, that's it, let's buy a boat".  So we tarted the house up, flogged it quick, shoved the kids into their own and bought a 70 year old ex-working canal boat.
If yer gonna do it, do it right!
Two fingers to the agent.  In fact he was going down the pan himself.  And I thought, "If Mr. ten percent ain't steady, I'm getting out of this game"
Best thing I ever did as our time on the canals, or "on the Cut" as we said, was fantastic.
It means you come "back on the bank" like church mice, but hey, everyone's gotta live somewhere, ain't they?

I can always (so far, touch wood) scratch a living and our needs aren't much.

Jacq, I'm not fighting progress in engineering, just trying without any luck to be part of it, AS LONG AS it leads to quality without diminution of personal skills.  As an add-on, fine if you can do it. As a replacement, no.
My last longish contract was at Volvo!  In Gothenburg.  I was in the splendid canteen having my usual coffee and ice cream, when 9/11 was on the TV in the foyer.  I couldn't work out why hundreds of people were all looking at the overhead tellies, until my English mate told me what had happened.
I'd never been a big Volvo fan, but seeing the ordinary guys doing that quality of prototyping was amazing.  Carbon fibre door skins that were little thicker than the final steel.  Superb workmanship.  I was there when Ford's came round with their "Craftsmanship" ideas.  They looked around and went back to Dunton with their tails between their legs<G>  There was nothing they could teach Volvo's guys. 

Paul,
Alias, despite what it's been used for in movies et al, is a perfectly good engineering software.  Top prove it, our team of imported Alias whizz-kids at SAL in Sontra, mid Germany, designed a new interior for a Golf, then they engineered it and surfaced it.  The Chief "engineer" poo-pood it all, calling Alias a felt-pen fairy software, smugly, but the guys imported all the Golf tin information from Wolfsburg, which was on CATIA and then engineered the new interior (dashboard, centre stack, door cards, etc) to be made overnight on a five axis mill in close grain foam.
Next morning a big pink interior was wheeled in. I made damned sure this smug and useless "engineer" was there, when the big pink was wheeled into the cut and shut Golf body and went in with a satisfying "thunk" right up to the tin, perfectly.  Thus they proved that Alias could do it all.  Those 4 guys achieved that in a week!!
The Chief "engineer" turned on his shiny toes, pulled himself up to his full height of 5ft nothing, stubbed out his nervously puffed-at Marlborough Lite and high tailed it out of the studio.  Nobody saw him for four days!!  Boy could that guy sulk.
And to think I actually got on great with that programme!  Ain't it Sod'sLaw that the one you can't afford is the one you get good at?

Cheers,
Martin

[marc_reusser]

My old room-mate and good friend from school used to teach/tutor Alias at their lab here in LA. He used to bring home some incredible stuff (he once brought home a disk with a bunch of the renderings/sequences made for the film Titanic). At the time you not only needed the software, but it helped to also use their specially built machines to properly run it on.  He had the box of software sitting around the house.....but, I was not really using computers yet, beyond word processing and such....so I never learned the program....same story with Photoshop and Illustrator 


Marc

[Hector Bell]

Marc. all I know is the system worked on Linux and the computers at work were Sun and Octane.  Hope that helps.
You had it at home and you didn't steal it???
Lordy, if you had you'd now be absolutely intolerable

Cheers,
Martin

[RoughboyModelworks]

He had the box of software sitting around the house.....but, I was not really using computers yet, beyond word processing and such....so I never learned the program....same story with Photoshop and Illustrator 
Marc

Oh well... chalk it up to another one of life's missed opportunities...

Paul

[marc_reusser]

Okay...so not exactly using Print-A-Part, but I thought it might be of interest as I used SU to design the parts...and then had the pieces made....albeit slightly larger and heavier ones.

I need to dig out and format the SU drawing, and post it later...but here is the machine....




And here is what it made for me this week. These are both milled out of blocks of French limestone.
















The tooling marks and chipping are intentional....and cost extra.

[RoughboyModelworks]

Very cool Marc... I'm assuming that's basically a CNC mill for stone work, not a printer per se. Are you planning any sort of finish on the stone or are you leaving it raw? By the way, if you have an extra one of those, it would look nice on our fireplace... 

Paul

[marc_reusser]

Thanks Paul,

Yes, it is basically a giant 5-axis mill. They place the block in there and cut away. My designs were very basic and simple (I prefer them that way)....but the machine can make beautiful compound surface and small intricate designs. I was told that it cuts 1mm in depth at a time.

The mantles will remain as raw stone. Hopefully they will get some natural staining/discoloration and weathering while on site waiting to be installed, and then of course from use once in place.  The shop can/will do staining on them to age and discolor the stone to look old....but that's an upcharge.

The simpler one is actually missing some more pieces on the legs (a plinth base like the more ornate one).

I was thinking the simpler one would go perfect in my guest house......"Rosebud".



Marc

[finescalerr]

Do you suppose anyone would mind if you were to apply some subtle weathering yourself? -- ssuR

[marc_reusser]

I'd have to drink an awful lot of beer to get that much surface coverage.

M

[finescalerr]

Then why not ask Wiki Leaks to help? -- ssuR