After spending an awful lot of money and time on engineering drawing programs over the years, we've made a big decision, and ditched the lot in favour of Google's freeware 'SketchUp' program - here's why...
We design engineering products for companies the world over. We, and they, have a choice of literally hundreds of CAD programs, and there's the problem. AutoCAD, Ironcad, ViaCAD, DeltaCAD, Solidworks, VariCAD, TurboCAD, Autodesk Inventor and the rest just don't really speak to each other. We need to communicate ideas - and because the basic version of SketchUp is absolutely free we know that wherever our clients are they will be able to download SketchUp, and be able to visualise a design exactly as we've imagined it. The online tutorials make SketchUp is relatively easy to learn, so everyone can get involved in the design process. Clients as far away as Mongolia can easily inform us of their needs, alterations are simple. One company has, with very little training, got shopfloor assembly workers involved in product design using SketchUp. The DXF export facility in the Pro version of SketchUp allows us to directly control shopfloor machines with micro-millimetre accuracy- even from the other side of the world. SketchUp's ability to produce line drawings means that we can create accurate instruction and assembly manuals, even advertising materials,straight from the original drawings.
Download SketchUp here, for free. It's available for Windows and Mac, but not, unfortunately, for Linux, which is used by many shop-floor machines. Oh yes, and a Chinese version would be a, I think, a major contribution to world trade, as the Chinese do have something of a manufacturing industry these days.
Glyn
Hughes Design |
