Week 2

Week 2: computer-aided design.

I tried some of the tools mentioned in the class:

2D design: Inkscape, Adobe Illustrator, LibreCAD and GIMP. Most of all I liked Inkscape because it has most user-friendly (at least for me :)) interface.

3D design: SketchUp, Blender, FreeCAD, Autodesk Inventor. My designs have a lot of precise dimensions to be set. I liked FreeCAD very much, but it still wasn't best for dimensions. I also liked Autodesk Inventor. But finally, I used SolidWorks installed on Windows 8 in virtual machine (Oracle VirtualBox) under my favourite OS - Ubuntu 12.10. I already designed all the parts I already bought for the robot (picture rendered in PhotoView 360): Using this models I already can design all the frames and pieces to be fabricated.