Metal Casting Zone

Hi guys, wich is the best commercial software to drwa models before casting?

Regards

Have you tried Google sketch-up? It's free and lets you play around with shapes and stuff. I'm looking at auto-cad and some others but I usually come back to free stuff. I'm Cheap!

thanks for your fast answer, so people use autocad, looks like i will need to learn it.

sketch up i tryed it a few times, but looks too simple

I use Alibre It is not just a drawing tool, it is a design tool. The cheap verson that is really pretty versatile is $99. Since the purpose of casting is to make 3D objects, it seems to me that you should use a 3D CAD tool.
Tom

i use maya (3d soft) but its not for casting i can draw 3d models but dont have measurements, and values to get an exact copy.

Alibre has several tools that are useful for pattern drawing. It can add drafts to faces of a pattern. It can easily add and re-size fillets and radiuses. It has a good measurement tool And the scale feature is really handy as patterns are usually slightly oversize to allow for the metal shrinkage. The percent shrink can be looked up in a Machinery's Handbook which can usually be found in the reference section of a local library. You can draw the part to real dimensions and then scale it to say three percent oversize if your material shrinks three percent Your drawings are now dimensioned three percent oversize. I'm not locked in to Alibre, perhaps all CAD tools do these things. I do think you need these features if you are going to do castings.
tom

solidworks is a good tool to draw 3d casting.

Personally, I mainly use 3Ds Max and Zbrush to do any type of 3D modeling.

But there are two free options you might be interested in.

Blender www.blender.org/

And

Truespace 7.6 www.caligari.com/

I've used Blender to do various 3D things, and it's great software, but I never liked the interface much.

Truespace! I started out using Truespace years ago when it first came out. I used it up to version 5.1 at witch time I went on to using 3Ds Max and Zbrush.

Truespace was actually commercial software but for some reason, just recently, they started offering their latest version, including all the training videos, FOR FREE!

Since I'm a registered user, they sent me an email at the time explaining why they were no longer selling their latest version, but I forgot what the reason was. Something having to do with some conflict with Microsoft or something.

To get all the training videos and the latest version, you normally would've had to pay a couple thousand dollars!

And I went to their site a month or so ago and downloaded everything just to see if there was some kind of catch hidden somewhere, but nope, completely free.

Whatever 3D software you end up using, you can export your models in a watertight STL format and then send that to a rapid prototyping company to get real life models, from which, you can then make molds from those and cast them into metal.

I have 20+ years experience with 3D software, including 7+ years experience with CAM and CNC, so if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask. =)