has anybody used viaCAD

[ampdoctor]

I've been sniffing around for a decent budget 3d cad solution. while pro/e and solidworks are amazing full featured packages their price tag makes them absolutely untouchable for pretty much anything other than corporate use. So I was sniffing around and stumbled upon this little package called viaCAD.  Their "commercial" 3d versions start at 100 bucks, while their "professional" versions which they call shark LT and FX have more bells and whistles along with photo realistic modeling start in at about 700.  With prices like that this thing could be the bargain of the century if it performs adequately.  So anyway, has anybody here used this package and if so how does it compare to other mid-range platforms, or even the higher end offerings by autodesk, creo, etc.

here's their website if anybody wants to poke around and give it a look...
http://www.punchcad.com/

[free_electron]

i tried. it's a clunky as autocad.

not a 3d tool.

take a look at Rhino

[ampdoctor]

thanks, i'm fiddling with the trial version of rhino this weekend and it's seems fairly good so far. it appears, and it may be just that I'm not familiar enough with the way things are done in this software, that there's a fair number of quirky behaviors that I need to get used to.  there also seem to be a lot of extra plug-ins for extra functionality that need to also be purchased.  so we'll see how this goes over the next 30 days.

as an aside unrelated to the software itself, they might want to consider reworking their website.  It's kind of a convoluted mess.

[cthree]

I use ViaCAD, It's not bad. It does 2D and 3D reasonably well, not great at either but cheap and functional. I'm a software guy which makes me preferential to parametric input. Beware that 3D design is not the same as 3D CAD. CAD stands for Computer Aided DRAFTING. If you want to model a t-rex to print on your makerbot then you want a design program. It you want to design machine parts or a building or structure consisting of possibly many precision geometric parts you want CAD. ViaCAD is the best of the low budget tools I found. For the 3D printer I mainly use OpenSCAD because it allows me to "script" objects. When I designed my 3 level deck and submitted the drawings to apply for building permits I used ViaCAD. ViaCAD (and AutoCAD obviously) support easy parametric input. So does Sketchup but I didn't want to pay $800 for little more than import/export filters, or at all!

[ampdoctor]

Well, I've been fooling around with Rhino for a while now and no it certainly is NOT a parametric cad program! I took an old 2d flat drawing that I had fabricated years about 10 years ago for a 16 gauge steel enclosure.  I imported it into rhino, and tried to bend it into it's 3d equivalent.  The number of flaming hoops you need to jump through are incredible! During the course of the test drive I encountered a laundry list of "wtf were they thinking" moments in executing what should be basic functions in a cad program.  There's also nothing that I was able to find that would flag any collisions in the design process, so you better be damn sure everything fits because you won't get any help from the software.

Another issue that may or may not be a problem is if various fabrication houses will be able to deal with the rhino files directly or with their step file conversions. I'd really hate to find out the hard way. For example, I've used Cadtopia's IntelliCad since it was released as beta software and it's served pretty well.  One down side I found with that software was that AutoCad nor Pro/E was able to directly read it's exported files, so I had to manually dimension my drawings and re-submit them to my fabrication house.  So not sure if there would be similar issues with Rhino or not.  Well that's my first blush review of Rhino 3d, and at this point i'd give it a thumbs sideways to use Dave's terminology.  Things may change should I decide to "acquire" an extended demo *cough* so I have more time to experiment with the software.

So, last night I downloaded the viaCad demo version and installed it.  Haven't spent any more than about 20 minutes with it, but so far the UI is driving me insane! There's something wonky about it that I just can't seem to put a finger on, but intuitive is pretty much the last word I'd use for it. In all fairness though, I haven't spent any time behind the wheel of the thing so my opinion may change dramatically in the next month.  After that I'll post more accurate reviews of both products.  Also, I noticed the other day that there is a free download of solidworks available. Not sure what that's all about. It has to be hamstrung and crippled beyond recognition, but I may take a peek at that some evening when I'm bored out of my mind with nothing better to do.

[FrankBuss]

I like ViaCAD, very useful for technical constructions. You should watch the tutorials, really nice are the auto-align features, perpendicular, parallel, diagonal, midpoint etc., in combination with auxiliary lines. For me the advantage is that it is a constructive solid geometry program, so you create cubes, cut it with other objects, use the blend modifier on edges, shell on solids etc., but you can still modify all previous steps with the "concept explorer".

I've created this weighing scale with it:

http://www.shapeways.com/model/22586/balance-weighing-scale.html?li=productBox-search

STL export for 3D printers is good, too. It is not useful if you want to model something like an animal or other complex natural free-form objects.

[cthree]

Solid geometry is huge for me. Modeling with surfaces is a pain in the ass. The difference is like making something out of clay vs cardboard box. Sketchup is a surface modeler. While I generally like the ui of Sketchup, all those surfaces and edges can get messy and you can't do binary transforms on them.

For example, to make a hollow box in Sketchup you create a rectangle and extrude it. That gives you a hollow six sided cube. In viacad you make two cubes, one smaller than the other and subtract the smaller from the larger, the smaller being the size of the void. In openscad you do difference() {cube([ox,oy,oz]); cube([ix,iy,iz]);}

What openscad let's you then do is this:

module hollowbox(width,height,length,thickness) {
difference() {cube([width,length,height]); cube([width-thickness*2,length-thickness*2,height-thickness*2]);}
}

Then to make a hollow box I can do:

hollowbox(10,20,30,1);

Forevermore. Brilliant!

I encourage anyone to try it out if they haven't done so yet.