Yes, that works but it is problematical getting "feature recognition" to work well and many of the cuts, extrusions and fillets etc. are not well handled, requiring a lot of work to reconstruct. I will persevere with it once I get my BB and can refer to the actual parts. I suspect that there has been some optimisation of hole sizes to accommodate natural printing deformities too as the models are not parametric, or at least the STEP versions aren't. Mike
Damn I am jealous of you guys that have solidworks, is that because of a day job or did you just make the huge investment required ? Don't get me started on the why they don't have a hobbiest non commercial option that doesn't require you to be a registered student.....I'd pay sensible money say £300 or so for that.
I get it through work. Though there's certainly other ways to get solidworks if you really wanted it. The student license is also available to retired military if I recall correctly.
Has anyone had any issues with the dxf files? I thought it would be straight forward to use them as a sketch and extrude them to correct thickness but they don't seem contiguous?
I've really gotten into OnShape, and we are going to try a trial of the mobile version at work (I will talk more about that at a later date, because we are doing something very unique [which will include the BigBox initially] with it and will likely publish a paper on it - sorry can't scoop yourself in academia). They have a free license which is limited in storage, although if you are willing to make your models public you can model a lot. They are coming up with an academic license which will be cheap. OnShape is by the guys who originally built SolidWorks. The instant cloud based collaboration is pretty crazy (changes reflect across all the machines within fractions of a second). I've already got some projects designed in it awaiting the BigBox. I also have the academic license for the entire Autodesk suite, so Fusion360, which is very full featured, but I find it slightly more chaotic than OnShape as it combines some 3D modeling features from the 3D animation world into mCad type modeling which is a tad weird.
yes Fusion360 is about the best I have found so far, it is very weird in places but the balance between features and ease of use isn't too bad. As to the "other' methods of running Solid, yes I am aware of them but no not into that if I can't run software legitimately then I don't use it. This is why the lack of a "personal" edition is so frustrating as I have real money I'd give them ! Just not as much as they charge for the commercial releases.
The plus with Solidworks is the toolbox with standard fixings etc. but I wonder if such is available in the free version of OnShape? It's not a feature of Fusion 360 yet either. The pain with SW is the lack of downward file compatibility unless you export then import and that brings with it a lot of fiddling and it is not perfect at importing other formats but it is my platform of choice at the moment. Mike
OnShape's free edition is exactly the same, just limited in storage. The parts bin is from 3rd parties on their app store. I've certainly imported parts from McMaster-Carr without issue. It reads and writes solidworks without a problem. The price for the Pro version is $1200/year for unlimited. There has been some discussion of an education institution license as well.
Where are these files? I broke my dual hotend mount during assembly and thought i would go to a makerspace and print a new one. Is that allowed? Can I buy a new one somewhere? Edit: I see http://files.e3d-online.com/BigBox/Plans/ but cant access that directory are these not the plans I'm looking for?
The plans a re available on Thnigverse now, just search for BigBox or follow this link http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1521722