What is your favorite & least favorite part of metal smithing?

[Exsecratio]

Hiya Fay,

Yup it would probably be enough,
Basic CAD drawing can be learned using books or by getting some drawings and seeing what you can do to pull them apart. I'm happy to help anybody that wants to learn a CAD package (I've been writing some tutorials for my own Laser forums of late).
Personally I'd suggest going with 2D to start with before moving to 3D so you develop some "spatial awareness" of the drawing environment (I'm not suggesting you don't have it already but the mindset is very useful to have).

Draftsite from Dassault Systems is free for personal use (made by the same company as Solidworks) and uses pretty much all the same commands as an £8,000 AutoCad package, once you have a command of 2D those shapes you have drawn can be "extruded" into 3D and provide a great start point for some 3D work.

I'll have a look and see what other packages are available (avoid google sketchup, it's rubbish for serious CAD use)

best wishes

Dave

[fay144]

Thanks a lot for the advice Dave! I'll have a look at Draftsite, you are right - that's probably a very good starting point before committing money towards a 3D package. You have been very helpful, I may be back looking for more advice in future. ;-)

[josef1]

At the risk of hijacking a great thread ! I don't think you need to spend a fortune on software to get started ,You can get a free download (I think it last for 90 days) for Rhino after the trial you can still use it but cannot save anything. It allows you to design in 2 or 3 dimensions and will allow you to do ok renders. I only use rhino to make my stuff I have a couple of other plugin (extra software that works within rhino but that's all)