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Free software for mechanical engineers

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Freecad  now does finite element analysis  see here Mech eng tutorial here Mech eng basics here Blender  also helps to produce 3d printed titanium or stainless steel parts from  sculpteo.com I believe the alloys could be 3d printed on  sculpteo.com . To learn blender i recommend  Blender Guru  and join his mailing list to download the blender key cheat sheet expect to spend 200 hours to learn blender and freecad each. Openscad  text based programming 3d printing software is easier than blender and freecad if you can't handle loads of complex keys in the long run its slower but it'll take years for most humans to get proficient with blender and freecad. See below for demo drawings rendered in blender in about 10 mins in my late 2008 macbook. I'm not sure of the best chemistry simulators, I only did chemistry to high school leaving cert level, but ,I believe knowledge of the schroedinger equation, and, knowledge in the following alvin ash video would go a long way in designin

Getting free cad part designs online... the truth

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After seeing this Milking machine part pneumatic cylinder available online  from traceparts.com that we needed and finding it was as easy as ordering the part online I went whoa theres money in these hills & on grabcad.com for free? I thought have mechanical engineers gone as daft as the software engineers on github.com, unfortunately for the rest of us the race to the bottom isn't as far down for mech engineers as software engineers yet. 3d print moulds on sculpteo.com and and make millions you might think unfortunately not. As was explained to me by my cousin a cad expert. Hi DJ Máiríde here. Generally they only have housings or outside shapes ón motors and cylinders. The main reason for no internal workings is because in large machines with thousands of parts it makes file big and slow! Same with threads on bolts. Need a large graphic care when theres 3000 plus bolts in 1 assembly. In work we generally dont make moving assemblys so no internal parts are really needed. I use