latest autocad general questions

[10mm]

I used acad for years, then switched to solidworks for the last 10 years. Long story short, I am looking into changing industries due to the oil and gas industry being crippled. I see many jobs for autocad 3d requirements. Well, I thought maybe autocad had really changed and must be practical for modeling since I see all of these job openings for engineers with autocad 3d knowledge. I downloaded the 30 day free trial of autocad. I dont see anything that would make modeling in autocad practical. It is better than it used to be, but really? Can you even go back and change features once it has been finished? Can you do assemblies of 3d models? Maybe it is just for rendering and cosmetics of single parts? Another thing is dimensions... Can I not easily select the dimension text and quickly change it to limit or bilateral? Again, I am used to working with solidworks, so im sure I am spoiled. Im not here to bash autocad. I just wanted to know if im wrong? Im sure that the price difference between autocad vs solidworks/inventor plays a roll.

People laugh when I tell them this, but when I was at Baker Hughes years ago, paperspace was never used. You would simply scale the border up or down to fit the 2d drawing in modelspace. It worked.




There is no situation so bad that you cant make it worse. Cmdr_Hadfield

 

[Sparweb]

I still like AutoCAD for 2D stuff. AutoCAD has its uses. 3D solids isn't one of them. That's why Autodesk created Inventor.
If you can use SW proficiently, you will pick up the basics of Inventor pretty quickly.
If you try AutoCAD 3D now, with your SW background, you will need a rubber room after about 1/2 hour.
Rendering solids in AutoCAD is still a boolean operation system, and attempts to capture the history of your operations fails to provide the control that parametric CAD users have enjoyed for years.

One word for you: Onshape

(OK not technically a word... just google it...)


STF

 

[berkshire]

Like sparweb says you do not want to go there , there is no assembly in Acad 3d you can only do a Boolean unite or subtract. You can only alter by erasing and redrawing. which will drive you nuts after using a one click dimension change program . Now one of the things that people in the construction industry are jumping on, is Autodesk's Revit programs with the MEP program being used quite a bit in the oil industry for pipeline work.
This may be the thing to inquire about when you see adverts for Acad 3D.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[10mm]

"If you try AutoCAD 3D now, with your SW background, you will need a rubber room after about 1/2 hour"

This is so true. Drawing a 3d model in acad is painful. I stopped using acad 2d around 2006. I downloaded the 30 day trial of 2016. It started coming back to me fairly quick. Im old school and hate the ribbon menu. I see they discontinued "classic" in 2015, so I turned on a few toolbars and the menubar.

Regarding revit...there are a large amount of jobs for architectural and commercial buildings using revit around this area. Civil also.. Ive been designing downhole tools forever, so it will be a frustrating change to find something that fits. I did download the acad trial. I guess I could download the revit trial also.

thanks for the confirmation.

There is no situation so bad that you cant make it worse. Cmdr_Hadfield

 

[transmissiontowers]

10mm;
Way off topic but I never use PaperSpace in ACAD, so I draw something full scale and then make a copy in model space and shrink it down to fit inside my drawing border. It is how I learned from the drafters many years ago and still do it that way. I do steel design for T-Line towers and just draw up some parts and pieces but mostly welded plate assemblies that bolt onto poles and towers. I have tried to play with PS but things just never looked right. When you have a 2x2x3/16 angle that is 30'-0 long with 6 holes on one leg, there is a lot of white space between bolts and the bolt gage lines are tiny when you try to draw in PS. We just compress the length and draw it proportional. This is how it was done back before CAD came along using velum and pencil.

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I have been called "A storehouse of worthless information" many times.

 

[dik]

YOu should get used to paperspace.

I can keep a single project on a *.dwg file and have each sheet as a paperspace drawing. I use attrib blocks for the titleblock as part of the block for the sheet outline and copy them mostly filled out with the sheet project information that is common to all sheets. The drawing stays at full scale and is not a matter of scaling the drawing to fit the sheet or scaling the sheet to fit the drawing. This is all by using the viewport to get the full sized drawing to fit on the titleblock.

It's easy once you get the hang of things and very convenient. I started with ACAD 3.15, way back when, and about 10 years back started using paperspace. I currently use Bricscad; it's nearly as good and better in some ways (Bricscad Platinum does 3D and parametrics and costs less than AutoCAD LT and with the new pricing model from Autodesk, it's a lot cheaper). I started using paper space about 10 years ago and haven't looked back. I'm not a CAD operator/draftsman, but it is a handy tool.

Dik

 

[JNieman]

@transmissiontowers

There's a reason man invented breaklines.

I've also seen drawings deliberately drawn such that the length of the member was not to scale. Especially when it's a 20' angle with nothing more than bolt holes at each end.

 

[transmissiontowers]

Yes, I've posted my method of madness on this ACAD forum before and provided a couple of screen shots with a few replies to have multiple viewports for one angle. I'm old and set in my CAD ways and I have tried the PS way but it does not fit with my tasks. I'm a Structural Engineer and not a CAD guy, so I don't sit on a PC all day drawing things up. I sketch my designs and see if things look right and determine bending plane widths on flat plates to determine how thick they need to be. I occasionally do a sketch of a replacement angle and it is just easier to draw a rectangle and put a couple of holes in it and manually type in the dimension text with stacked fractions. I like the hand drawn format and use hand lettering fonts to make the drawings look like they did 50 years ago.

We have old hand drawn 24x36 sheets (with 20 angles done per sheet) that have been scanned to TIF or PDF where the dimensions are too bad to read and I have to layout the piece full size to find out where they should be.

My holly grail is to find a font that does stacked fractions without the horizontal slash and inch marks like angles were drawn and dimensioned by hand 40 years ago. The " mark can look like an 11 when you reduce a 24x36 drawing down to 8.5x11 to fit in a 3 ring binder so we never put them in. We would put 23'-6 3/16 for a dimension but with the 3 as a superscript 1/2 the size of the 6 inches and the 16 as a subscript on the diagonal under the smaller 3.

I'm a couple of years past retirement age but still like the work so I am about one reprimand from retirement. I tell them I can retire quicker than they can document the reasons for firing me. But then I would have to stay home and argue with the wife about her spending on quilting.

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I have been called "A storehouse of worthless information" many times.