Ask HN: CAD design for beginners

[gunnark01]

I am a developer who has recently become interested in fabrication and metal work. I think it's awesome to make stuff. I want to do more complicated things, f.ex. I want to build a special gate for my garden that folds in a specific way and requires me to build custom latches. I want to play with my ideas for the hinging and latching components in some sort of CAD software but the only two free pieces of CAD software I've been able to find (opencad and freecad) seem to be extremely complicated. Is there any sort of CAD software for beginners or a free online course that I could take?

[gbtw]

I started with making 3d models of objects and weapons for games 15 years ago. Usually based of existing pictures or blueprints. Copy existing stuff is easy, even without measurements because good pictures with good camera can still be used for scaling stuff. I used to have about 100GB picture archive of all sort of stuff to be replicated into 3d models for game us.

Getting to know the tooling before you make something new really is the way to go. I currently use Freecad and Openscad. Freecad really has a way to work, sometimes going at something from a certain direction really helps you curb the complexity and pitfalls you can get yourself into. I can suggest most of the videos made by https://www.youtube.com/user/cad1919/videos on youtube. Usually videos without audio just doing the modeling. Often I am surprised at his route to completion, usually fairly efficient and direct. For the item you want to make I would suggest following his example.

You should draw it out on paper in maybe 2 or 3 perspectives and do all the hard calculation and then just replicate it in 3d.

Freecad is really as user friendly as it gets for actual good small tolerance Free CAD. There are however some usability and or nagging issues. Like how you break your model and can't continue the route you had because the chamfer or join brakes your mesh :).

On a side note are you sure your idea is novel and new, I assume someone has made it before and you can copy ;) a few months ago there was a N mechanical mechanisms link on hackernews, it might be in there :).

Edit: don't look at the videos you find on youtube and just copy the thing their making. Make your own stuff just steal their workflow.

Also do everything using coordinates and measurements not drag and drop. Might help you visualise it better.

[DanGPhoton]

FreeCAD has some advanced capabilities but is not a great package to start on. I've created some weird shapes in it but would never have been able to do it if it were not for a fair amount of SolidWorks experience. You might try using OnShape, where everything is stored in the cloud. I haven't tried it yet but it seems to be made by the same people who did SolidWorks. They probably have good tutorials. If you get over a learning curve there you might be better prepared to do things on FreeCad offline.

[detaro]

There is Tinkercad, but that might be to basic, depending what you exactly want to do.