Let's get started!

You will see with Streamlined Sketching and Feature Based modeling is much more productive and flexible. It gives you a more real world feel to your design process and is a much more pleasurable and productive experience.

We will start with -1 Bracket

We set the units to mm



We drag and drop a block from the Standard Shapes Catalog into the scene and size it.

Many of you Solidworks and similar system users will notice we don't have any planes available. IronCAD is not based on defined planes. The plane is part of the the feature.

Note: Why does IronCAD call it a scene instead of a workspace? IronCAD was first released as a graphic design program called Trispectives. It still has much of the graphic design functionality. It truly is a wonderful mixture of professional 3D CAD and graphic design, which puts it in a much more flexible category as compared to the very mechanical engineering focused Solidworks clones.



We now drag and drop a Cylinder to the mid point of the aft edge of the block and size it. This makes the move of the cylinder to the correct location an no brainer.



Using the Triball we move the cylinder into the correct location and rotate it.



We drag and drop a block onto center of the boss and size it as shown



We drag and drop a cylinder at the center of the boss and size it.



We drag and drop a on to the aft block and size it.



We pull the two blocks together to create the common edge



Now we create the center rib with two blocks and size them.



We put in the blends



Now for the holes. For the hole in the boss we just drag and drop a hole cylinder to the center and size it. But for the two counterbored holes we will use the Custom Hole Tool. We drag and drop a Custom on the mid-point of the face and size it in the dialog box.



Again using the triball we locate the hole using the "Edit Distance from Point"



Again using the Triball we will mirror link the hole. We move the Tribal to the mid-point of the part by selecting the space bar, onces set we will again hit the spacebar that makes the Triball active and select the inner relative axis and use the mirror link option.



Now we just add the blends. We turn off the catalog. Usually we use it in autohide mode.



We are done with the part!



This part was done with no sketching. IronCAD has robust sketching but with IronCAD you usually design in a specific order. Now you can always start with a sketch and go from there but usually your start by dragging and dropping shapes.

• Drag and Drop
• Sketching
• Direct Edit
• Surfacing

Now to create a similar part -2

First thing we do is copy and paste the part. I renamed the first part -1 and the new part -2 and suppress, we can do this because IronCAD is a single model environment.

We suppress the blends. We select all of the feature we are going to move we deactivate the Triball and set it to global and locate it to the center of the boss and move it using the "Edit Distance from Point".



We rotate 10 degrees.



We pull the blocks to the common edges,



We unsuppress the blends. We have to edit the 2mm blends as did the Solidworks presenter. We are done with the part.



Now we are ready for the AIDs (drawings)

We have two files for the two parts and AIDs.

Here is -1 detailed



When we create sheet 2 and set it to configuration -2 Bracket

This is another stark examples of how Streamlined Sketching and Feature Based Modeling utilizing IronCAD's drag and drop of smart editable intellishapes from a catalog and the use of the Triball can increase productivity easily 5X. I usually estimate 5X increased productivity in conceptual design and 10X in changes, and I believe I am being conservative. IronCAD can edit most of the Solidworks clone parts and assemblies faster than it can be done in the native CAD system.

Is 3D CAD Productivity an Oxymoron?

Five Functions that Increase 3D CAD Productivity!!

Please review the earlier exercises.

IronCAD vs Solidworks