Free Design programs?
 

Free EASY to use program , I have tried a few without much practice I am computer savy and pretty mechanically inclined. But something about seeing these computer programs just overwhelms me and I just dont feel like I know where to start and write them off as being too complicated.

I would like something that I can make a model with and actually see it in action / movement

suggestions?

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I am in the process of designing a new engine type , where so far it seems any type of engine , two stroke , four stroke , new tech and old tech can be easily modified to retrofit.

I have had this idea for years , came to me from an old value meal toy but actually decided to look into it today and within the first 30 minutes I said to myself ohhh **** I think I got it.

in my head the design seems to bring tons of amazing pros that in conjuction with each other seem to be a multiplying result of efficiency due to mechanical advantage , simplicity , lighter weight and rotating masses , and inherent knock accepting qualities leading to high reliability under bad tune/environmental/fuel conditions.

There are a few qualities that i am not sure if they are pros or cons , but I feel if they arent pros they can be fixed with tuning and engineering changes but I am unaware of the actually reliability of some of the components design and friction of them in an engine ... I am trying to be secretive because its so simple I cannot afford to give away an idea to someone who can create a patent and design before me.

One disadvantage that I am encountering is however though , the timing... The engine seems like it may have increased harmonics and vibrations due to the simplicity and pre-detonation abilities of the motor , which I need to figure out a way to keep everything in balance and firing order without creating alot friction , complexity , reliability , size and weight problems. But I am not exactly sure how much of a problem these timing differences cause , and cylinders do not even have to be paired but for balance and harmonics to cancel vibrations and protect bearings seems like it should be a number one priority. I am not a big fan of motors that vibrate so much they seem to be damaging their bearings but it could just be me trying to create a smooth running engine and thinking it may not be practical when reality it would be but "perfection" of certain criteria is on the mind.

Ixnay on blabbing about your design until you are ready to have people sign Non-Disclosure Agreements. :)

To solicit the best response, you could define the design requirement, and your hardware platform.

Design and modelling software could be grouped into box modelers, NURBs modelers, CAD software, automatic mesh capture software, and others.

The workflow includes modelling, texture mapping, rigging animating and rendering. Before you get into simulating gas flows, and etc.

The workflow within any one program can be intimidating; believe, me I know. The result you require may require passing files from one program to the next; for instance you may need to prepare templates in Photoshop to import into your modeller.

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Of course all that is non-responsive. What you need is a free cross-platform program that will do it all, with light-weight system requirements.

May I suggest Wings 3D. I finally settled on it because I can understand the operation. It is a simple box modeler, but it will do texture mapping and rendering. There is a very clear control to tell you whether you are working with the whole object, faces, edges or vertexes. And operations have you select something, then right-click to get a context sensitive menu, fiddle with the middle button or Tab for numeric input or whatever, then left click to accept. That is simplistic, there are modifier keys and additional tools under the menus, but it made things accessible to me. There are tutorials on YouTube.

There certainly are other options.

ixnay?

I'll gives wings 3d a look thanks , but yah basically I am just looking for something that I can make basic individual components mesh together so I can see if there are any problems with clearances , binding , etc. It doesnt have to be a model that moves just something where I can see it together so I can get a better picture to imagine it.

After a little more thinking , my design will only work practically with 2 strokes without being overly complicated. Would love to be able to throw ideas

Lol truth is these computer programs are complicated.
I remember Denver University has some software for this type of thing you are looking at.
I can't remember which doesn't help, but I know what your talking about.
I have used many design platforms and even received an award for SME on different design software at my college. Hands down most engineers coming out of college and in industry like how easy Solidwork's is to use and learn.

Taking a class at your local college that has a mechanical engineering department.
Software should be easily accessible.
Only problem is some classes have "requirements", which can be by-passed.

In the end this will cost you something because nothing is free. Time is money.

Most of this is determined by how far you are willing to go, are you willing to go to any length.

Well about a year ago , I replaced the heads on my dads truck , in return for doing the work I got his laptop which I kind of wanted a laptop, irony about the situation is he got my desktop so all in all basically I could of just traded him , but fixed his truck to make a trade..

I just realized I do not have a mouse , so wings 3d is kind of impossible to fiddle with and get used to when I cant do all the movement functions without a middle mouse button right now.

So I went back to old school figure things out with my hands way , and figured alot out about my design , I am confident.

I need to see about getting a few good machine tools , and making everything out of wood till I am perfectly happy to move on to sandcasting or machining.

ixnay - Wiktionary

Wings 3D has modes that mimic 3 other programs, one of them will work with a 2-button mouse (IIRC). My local electronics recycler sells 3-button USB mice for $5.

But if you want to model clearances, then you will need CAD software; e.g., Solidworks or maybe FreeCAD.

Your laptop will have specifications like: Operating System, processor speed, RAM and hard drive size, etc. These will affect its ability to run the software you choose.

Wood working and metal working also have a learning curve. If you do it in software, you can outsource the fabrication; Google '3D printing services' or' rapid prototyping'.

progeCAD2009, is freeware with some bugs(no mouse scroll)

solidworks, AutoCAD(if you can find either on other sites); see weather your laptop can handle either of those

Few more design changes , mainly to make things simpler , and from realization of priorities , reliability , costs.

I will look into the other proge program , if that doesnt seem to be a fit for me , I guess I will look more into sketchup , ive used it before a little and out of the few ive tried it seems to be the easiest so far and actually was able to make a few things with it doodling. I will look through old parts see if i can find a usb mouse if not ill buy one.

I will probably format my computer before going further with design though. Clean things up organize them , make things possible run a little quicker I know those programs take alot of operating power.... and can never be too safe with a computer that was used by other people , snooping programs ;)

Doing some research , seeing a few concepts that are close to mine so its a bit worrying , none exactly the same , mine should offer less moving parts than these. Some for generator design instead of combustion. But I am unsure if these actually exist in the real world yet and what their results are if so , it may give me a greater visualization of what my results will be , due to less energy conversions and friction.

But I found a site that I still have to look at a little better that will sell the parts I am looking for out of plastic , which is good , I can buy them cheap and try to put a basic concept model together , So guess I'm a little closer but still think I may end up going out and buying some tools to get prototypes made. So far there is only one website that sells these parts from a 30 minute search.

Sorry, my email was set to sort by name instead of date and I didn't see you'd posted.

Thumbs up on Sketchup. It would have been my next suggestion, but the .obj export is kind of 'sketchy' [yuck yuck] for my purposes. I do like that you can snap protractors onto a face to read angles in Sketchup, though.

If you can formulate questions that don't give away too much of your design, you might post in Hybrids or General Efficiency Discussion. There are a lot of very knowledgeable people here. Why not let them show off a little bit? :)
You will probably spend as much time on research as on prototyping, so unless your [scale? nonfunctional?] model can be built in 1/2 hour, you could look into types of plastic, tooling, efficiency and friction, etc., in more depth; questions that you might pose in the other forums.

For your hardware, CAD designers like graphic tablets better than mice [I don't]. And a laptop your dad was willing to let go of probably will be brought to it's knees. If it's a Windows machine some distribution of Linux will be faster on the same hardware. And there's tricks like this:

Cool Tools – Optical Drive to SSD Upgrade

For a price similar to the $150 he spent, it's like a new computer. The solid state drive replaces the optical drive, you have the original hard drive you can dual-boot to, no need to do the clean install or rather you're installing into a clean device, and the latency when it has to go to the drive is *way* down. USB memory sticks replace the optical drive.

I pretty much cant ask questions about my design without giving anything away. But as far as modeling/ construction techniques and how to's definitely can ask questions about that.

My biggest concern is engaging wear , big downward spiral on my design if it cant hold I see the motor being completely destroyed. But the advantage is with more mechanical advantage the motor revs at lower rpm for the same hp so that wear will be reduced exponentially......At the peak stresses , that is where there is the least contact area. I am unsure if I can overcome this with more robustness and keep timing from going completely out of whack and make it so it will not being able to be regulated and if that extra robustness will just exponentially create more stress to where the design cannot work or create too much inefficiency.
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If I make a model out of wood , I need a way to test it , assuming my best options is on the crankshaft with an electric motor for the input and measure the output , plot and graph a bunch of points and compare. This way would incorporate all the same friction as making the input force on the piston face vs on the crankshaft because everything is still moving , while having an easier and cheaper test method. Since the piston face would need an actuator with a timed event. While the electric motor can have a constant run since the crankshaft pretty much always rotates at the same rpm acting as a flywheel unlike the pistons with their full accel and decel , So as long as each model has as best possible tolerances to each other as possible to make them run as smooth as I can get them. Using a fully balanced engine design or as balanced as possible greatly helps here , especially with subpar testing , materials and manufacturing I imagine I should be able to do the test and make the models out of wood. I will do the test free flowing , as far as no heads to minimize pumping losses since the electric motor input mimics a constant air/fuel mixture and volume , Even though pumping losses will still exist , I suspect it will give me a more better reading on the engine efficiency.

How I think I should measure the outputs is , since electric motor efficiency changes from rpm to rpm , run each engine at the same rpm , and measure its amp draw. That way I can compare the amp difference from one motor to the other giving me an efficiency reading. Do this for various rpms , I could then measure the amp draw of the electric motor not being hooked to the engine. Then if there are any specs for the electric motor as far as what its efficiency ratings are at each rpm , do a little math , and calculate what the efficiency of each engine is at a given rpm.

My question is does anybody see any improvements in testing methods? On either making the testing easier , suggestions , and problems or overlooks I have? along with a discussion on them so I can know exactly why it is a problem and why to use a different method?

I might post this in the hybrid area like you suggest :) will probably get more input

File>Export>3D Object. You can export as .3DS or several other formats for Falcon or other use.

I have a secondary idea , hopefully can impliment into this one without adding to but just modifying ...but ill do that after this one is done. its killing me to no be able to talk about them I really want to be able to bounce information and ideas back and forth.

Thanks I will look into the sketchup stuff , and exporting. Eventually but right now its 11pm and I didnt workout today instead I was installing parts back on my car that I took off to add a heatsink to.

I hope I didn't make you more paranoid with the 'ixnay' part, I just wanted to use the word. :)

One reason to open up a bit about it is the possibility you will find that it already been done, saving yourself a lot of work.

An example of what's possible through on-line open source collaboration is www.localmotors.com. They are mostly working with whole vehicles; their first success was the Rallyfighter, but they gave out $6000 in prize money for designing a door handle for the Edison 2 VLC. They have Seimens Solid Edge CAD software priced from Free 30-day trial to $300 for the top package.

I found an old video that shows a bunch of mechanisms as a tribute , and its in there , but not in an engine , it just shows the free movement which turns out is exactly the same thing I need to put the an engine just bigger and designed to work with the bore and stroke. So as far as being used in an engine I cant find any documentation or proof. But I know the component already exists. So whether or not it will interfere with me being able to patent it for this use after a working version is made ,I'll just have to see how that goes , worse comes to worse ill have it for my personal vehicle unless im ordered to not be able to use it. I dont know what type of name the patent would be under if there is an existing one , so hard to search , reason not on vehicles now could be there is no patent and just isnt designed to work for one yet or the patent is taken and just sitting , unused , unsold.

Nah I am trying to be as secretive as I can be already regardless of the word , I am already changing the way I word things to prevent a slip.. I just never heard of the word

Maybe you could find something in here:

Unusual Internal-Combustion Engines

I looked through every engine design there , nothing :)

I need to see about getting on the ball with making a prototype , just dont have the tools or really room to store them. *sigh* it would be so nice if legos somehow could make my engine if they supplied these other components. Then just compare two lego motors lol.

That's a good thing, the link served it's purpose. Put them all inside your laptop, it's already taking up space.

I haven't got a lot else to add.

So far it seems like no documented engine has been made with my design , I decided making out of wood , would be my easiest option. It would be nice to work with a bandsaw and a drill press but I can take my time and hopefully get good enough results with a jigsaw and a cordless drill. file as needed , and hopefully have working prototype just need to figure out dimensions for equal displacement for the test comparison engine since component ratios are different.

You were a huge help and as soon as I start making progress , i'll post my findings and results.

There are foam plastics with the density of balsa wood, and wood has a broad range of qualities. A master carpenter will know when to choose Larch over Hickory :)

Compare the jigsaw to a Japanese saw and consider a hand drill press you strap the cordless saw into.

Happy to help. Good luck.

I might need a few curved cuts which im not entirely sure if the that saw will allow for consistency? Also would have to buy one I have everything else on hand already

I havent cleared out my laptop , gotten a mouse , or anything yet , only doodled some with a 2d physics program. I made a working model , hard to do with the program but its easy to use just takes more time positioning and tweaking.. and theres also the fact that the program isnt completely accurate , sometimes the materials miss each other , like pass through instead of contact.... blehh....

So my first working model I realized that my power input the way it was supplied did not translate into a real working model , it would work if the crank was turned , but if the pistons were moved it would freespin some.

So back to the drawing board , I realized why not use a seperate model to simulate piston force , *crankshaft and electric motor* although it gives constant torque even on upstroke , I can negate that aspect by assuming a multicylinder engine.

So after doing that , I got a new working model just need to fine tune everything get specs so can work smoothly and not intermittently. Then i will be moving onto real life prototype after seeing if things can be simplified or improved on even more.

I saw this somewhere the other day:

"To double your success rate, triple your failure rate."

so in theory we are wrong ATLEAST 33% of the time :D

Well the "pos" program I used that I made a 2d model of would pass materials through each other in the program unless speed conditions were ideal. Lousy program , but it did show me that the model works. I just could not get any ideal tolerances and interactions between objects but I was still able to make a model that did exactly what I wanted it to do , be it without being able to variable speed to see it operate at a wide range and get accurate data..

So I need to move to a program where I can make a better model , after i spent forever learning how to use the program and make it... Then still make a working mini prototype without going broke and get some real world tests.