Intro and a few examples
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Hi all. I have been working with computers in one capacity or another since 1963. Graphics is one of my major interests and especially 3D graphics. I built a high res graphics board for my PET in 1980 and the first 3D graphic I created was a spiral staircase. I've been fiddling around since then on many platforms. Currently I use a middle of the road machine with a dual core Athlon 7750 and a GTS250 with a gig of ram. Online storage is 4 terabytes among 6 computers on the home lan. I am retired but am still very active with programming in a variety of languages including basic, C#, javascript and machine code.
I do a lot of CAD work for myself as I have a full machine shop including a CNC milling machine I designed and built. I have used most of the CAD packages available with the exception of the really high end packages. I build stuff. It's always my own designs. I often don't use plans but when I do it is always drawn on a computer by myself. I am conversant with POV-Ray since it was on the Amiga and have been using it since. I have recently been exploring Kerkythea (Quirky Thea?) and have mostly managed to beat it into submission.
Favorite subjects to draw are nearly anything but being a nerdy asperger type I tend to like things with lots of detail and repetitive features, especially gears. I tend to like animals more than most people and have been told I have the social graces of a tree stump.
Examples of my drawings:
This first wasn't drawn at all. It was programmed in POV-Ray using only Scene Description Language. I subsequently built the telescope exactly as shown.
Fast forward to near the present. Here are a couple of very recent renders from a SketchUp model. The background image is also mine. It's fortress mountain near Calgary, Alberta. The renders are from Kerkythea.
This is a mirror cell assembly for my new telescope design that I am currently building. This was designed in SU7 and was rendered in POV-Ray.
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Cool renders
About Modeling : I don't know if you know Moment of Inspiration
Seems you will love it -
That looks very interesting but I generally won't pay for software any more. I use open source almost exclusively with the primary exception being the operating system and a few other packages. I also refuse to use any pirate versions of anything and if I absolutely need something I write it myself. Over the years I have released a number of small items to the general user community. I also regularly release images for anyone to use such as that image of fortress mountain and my astrophotos. I have thousands of images online as well as a large amount of data, all of it either my own work or used with explicit permission.
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Welcome, Evan.
Hope to hear and see more from you.
Are talents and abilities such as yours, and social graces really mutually exclusive? -
Welcome Evan
As someone born in Calgary, Fortress popped right out at me. I figured it out one time, and I think I spent about 2 years of my life hiking in the Kananaskis, and Sheep River areas, when I added all those hikes up.
It sounds like your coding, and problem solving skills will be a great addition to the community.
Welcome aboard! -
@mitcorb said:
Welcome, Evan.
Hope to hear and see more from you.
Are talents and abilities such as yours, and social graces really mutually exclusive?Reminds me of a joke that has more truth to it than most.
How can you tell that an engineer has an outgoing personality?
When he talks to you he looks at your shoes instead of his own.
I just love programs such as SketchUp. It allows me to easily illustrate what I see in my mind's eye. I think entirely in visual terms and have no trouble seeing things in my mind in full 3D. SketchUp is the best tool I have found so far that allows me to easily and quickly give these internal images an external reality, even if it is "virtual". Together with my home shop and CNC capability I can then change that virtuality into a real object with real function.
The telescope I am currently building is designed entirely in SU7 down to the smallest detail.
Here are a few views.
This is a part for the telescope as designed in SU7. Note that this image isn't a render but is from SU7.
These are the actual parts made with a small 20 ton press after cutting on my CNC mill. A small design change was made in the CAD-CAM program after exporting from SU.
This is a render of the main optical tube assembly.
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I am not sure what problem you refer to. There is an issue using small scale models in Kerkythea. It seems to be using integer math for speed but that causes real problems with models that have features measured in thousandths of an inch. One model I did recently had to be scaled up by a factor of 100 to render with acceptable accuracy.
It was this one. Can anybody spot the rather significant shortcut I took to make this easier to model?
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I wonder how you reacted to the small faces, scale up scale down "problem" in Sketchup.
Edit: Of course, you have been at this for longer than me and probably outgrew it.Edit, again: I liked the joke about the engineer
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Would it be imposing an image of internal threading in the output?
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No, that would really be cheating and hard to do anyway. The "threads" aren't threads at all since they aren't helical. I only modeled 1/5 of the part and then copied it to make the full model.
So what is the "faces" problem?
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Sketchup's intentionally imposed limitation of not facing geometry smaller than 1mm or .001", I believe in direct modeling. You can scale up, model stuff with faces that will be smaller than this when you scale down, and the faces will remain after scale down. This may be an oversimplification. Lots of past discussion in this Forum.
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Ok, now I know what you mean. That issue goes far beyond just creating faces. It is directly tied to how the inference engine works to autosnap lines together so the geometry isn't left open. If it didn't do that there would be major problems with users that freehand draw instead of using the measurements window to specifiy precise node locations. It would be nice if the autosnap function was adjustable to less than .001" but there are some workarounds that can be used.
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Hi Evan,
Welcome to SCF!
That's one of the most interesting intros I read in a while.
Rich
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Hmm. The Chinese have a saying "May you live in interesting times". In that particular use the word interesting is near to being a curse.
Here are a couple of more renders of a planetary transmission. This is for possible use in an electric trike project that I have built and am experimenting with. The trike is intended to be a hybrid utilizing electric and petrol power as a true hybrid where the petrol engine operates as an assist to the electric system. Note that I am not in business not do I have any plans to start one. Any developments such as this are free for anyone to use if they think it worthwhile.
This is the concept drawing of the trike:
This is the actual development vehicle:
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