Ironcad Tutorials

[Gail Elfert]

Thislab is derived from the IronCAD tutorials. The help files andShow_Me files are on the cluster computers. These help files areactually helpful (unlike MicroSoft help). So if you want to find outhow to use the Sheetmetal functions in IronCAD, search for Help onsheetmetal.

Select Create a new Scene and click OK. (Drawings are 2D and Scenes are 3D.) You will get another dialog box. This box lets you select the background color and whether or not a grid (drawing plane) is displayed. Select an option with a grid.

Before we start, move your mouse to the menus at the top of the screen. Look at the options in each of the menus. We will use only a few of these commands in the introduction, but looking at the menus will give you a sense of the options in IronCAD.

In the Shapes menu, click on the Block shape. Without releasing the mouse, drag the block into the scene. As you drag the mouse over the scene, a small block will follow it. (I can't show you this in a screen dump because the cursor doesn't show up in screen dumps.)

Move the mouse around the handles (red balls) on the block. Youwill see the cursor change shape and the handles change color. Put thecursor over the top pin until it turns yellow when the cursor turnsinto a hand with a two headed arrow under it:

While you're looking for this button, hold your cursor over theother buttons to see the other ways you can change your view of thescene. Try the dolly camera, orbit, pan andzoom buttons. You probably have a strange perspective on yourblock now. You can press the restore camera button, which willreturn the view to the standard perspective.

After you are done reshaping the cylinder, click in the background. You can also add another cylinder to the scene that is not connected to the block. Drag another cylinder in, and drop it away from the block. Be sure that no points or faces on the block are highlighted in green.

Add some more positive and negativeshapes to your part: Orbit your part and add/subtract shapes on allthe sides. To see what you have added to your part, and to make iteasier to select a particular sub-shape, click on the scenebrowser button.

Making parts using the standard shapes (called primitives) is easy, but you won't be able to make all the shapes you want that way. Sometimes, you will need to draw a profile and then extrude or rotate it to make a solid part. We will only make solid parts in this class, because our goal is to make parts that can be manufactured on the rapid prototyping equipment. IronCAD, and most other CAD programs, also enable you to make 3D surfaces, but we will not cover them in this class.

Since IronCAD only lets you create valid 3D parts, you can't justdraw in 2D. To make a cross section, you need to start by statingyour intentions. We are going to make a balloon. My plan for theballoon is to make a profile that looks something like the following:

and then revolve it around the vertical axis to make a solidballoon. This is called a Spin Shape in IronCAD. Inthe toolbar, you will find a set of buttons that let you extrude,spin, sweep and loft. Press the Spin Shape toolbutton.

Before we draw the profile for the balloon, let's look at some of the formatting options for the grid. Select Format -> Grid.Note that this menu item is only available when you are creating or editing a cross section. When you select this item, you will get a popup window that lets you control how the cross section is created. The screen dumps below show the options for each tab in the Drawing Options window.When you are done selecting the options you want, click OK. You will now have the grid in your drawing area. Use the magnify tool on the left to zoom in on the grid. I prefer the magnifying tool that let's me select the window to zoom in on, but you should experiment with the different zooming options to see which one works best for you. Once you have zoomed in on the grid, select the polyarc tool from the bottom toolbar. This tool will let us create a sequence of arcs.

Next, we want to make a series of lines that close the bottom of the balloon and form the stick that the balloon is on. Press enter to end the polyarc and press the polyline tool to start a sequence of lines. In the options for the grid, we selected snap to geometry, so if you put the mouse close to the end of the last arc and click, the end point of the arc and the start point of the line will be the same point. This is important because otherwise the balloon would have a hole in it and we wouldn't be able to revolve it. I clicked the mouse to make a sequence of lines including one along the axis (which doesn't show in the screen dump) to create a closed cross section of the balloon.

However, if you zoom out, you will see that the balloon is lying along the y axis. To rotate it to the z axis, we are going to use the triball. The triball is a 3d manipulation tool that is very powerful, but takes a while to get used to. Select the balloon and then click on the triball tool button:

I have included the IronCAD helppages on the triball and some slide shows thattake you through the steps of different operations using the triball,so I will not include that in this part of the tutorial.

In the Smart Paint window, you can select a color for the balloon,you can make it shiny, you can make it slightly transparent, you canput a decoration (decal) on it, and you can make it glow slightly.Play with the options to see how they change what the balloon lookslike.

In the first section, we just dragged in parts and resized themwithout any sense of their true dimensions. This is not the way onenormally designs a part. Let's start a new scene. Our goal is to makethe following part:

This part is made up of two plates joined by a cylinder with holesin the corners of both plates. The corners of the plates arerounded. We will start by making the bottom plate with the dimensions4.724 x 4.724 x 0.197. Then we will make a cylinder with an innerradius of 2.212, an outer radius of 2.527 and a height of 0.591.

In order to dimension something, we need toknow what the units are. Select Format ->Units. You will get the following dialog box. The default unitsfor IronCAD are English units: Inches, Degrees and Pounds. Look atthe pull down menus to see what the options are for eachattribute.

Now grab one of the handles. As you resize the block, you will see the dimensions change. This doesn't seem like a very accurate way to dimension a part. Select one of the handles, and right click on the handle. If you select a face or edge instead of a handle, you will get a different menu. Be sure that you have a handle selected before you right click.

Youwill get a box that allows you to change the length, width and heightof the box. How do you know which way the dimension will change? Itwill change the dimension in the direction of the handle that youselected.

You will get a dialog box with manytabs. Take a minute to look at the options in the tabs. When you aredone, select the Anchor tab. This tab tells you the location ofthe anchor. The height should be zero (i.e. the anchor shouldbe in the x-y plane. The anchor should be located at the mid-point ofthe length and the midpoint of the width.

Now select theSizebox tab. Notice that you can change the length, width andheight of the part in this menu. We are going to change the defaultbehavior of the resizing operation. Pull down the menu next toLength and select About anchor.

Click OK. Grab the left-hand handle again. As you move the handle,you will see that IronCAD now resizes the length around the anchorrather than from the opposite face. Since we didn't change theresizing behavior for the width or height, they will still scale fromthe opposite side. After you understand how this works, go back to theSizebox menu. (Right click on a face and select IntelliShapeProperties.) Make the default behavior to resize from the oppositehandle.

Select the handle on the top face of the block andright click. Since we have selected this handle, IronCAD will resizethe block relative to the opposite face. Since the opposite face issitting on the x-y plane this is what we want. (If it resizedit about the anchor, the part would extend in the negative zdirection.) Set the height of the block to 0.197.

Now we need to change the dimensionsof the length and the width. We want to scale these around the origin,which is the default for the non-selected handles in the sizebox. So,select the top handle again and right click to get the edit window forthe size box. Change the width and length to 4.724.

Go to the Shapesmenu and select a cylinder. Drag it to the plate. As you drag itclose to the center, the green dot will become brighter. Drop thecylinder when the dot is highlighted. Press the fit scenebutton.

Notice that because earlier weselected the option to show the dimension box, the dimensions areshown for all selected parts now. You can toggle this option on andoff depending on what you are working on.

Select the top handleand right click to get the edit sizebox window. From the drawing, weknow that the height of the cylinder is 0.591 and the outer radius is2.527. In the sizebox, set the height to 0.591. (Which direction willit scale in?) Since the radius is 2.527, the width of the cylinder istwice that. IronCAD will do the arithmetic for you, so you can enter2.527*2. As soon as you enter this, the length will change to thesame value since the length and the width of a cylinder have to be thesame.

Westill have some work to do cleaning up the cylinder and making ithollow, but before we do that, we are going to add the plate on thetop. Select another block from the Shapes menu. Drag itto the top face of the cylinder and drop it when the green center dotis highlighted.

Release the mouse when the edge orface of the bottom plate is highlighted. The face of the new block isnow co-planar with the face of the lower block. Do the same thingwith each face. Use the orbit tool to see and change the otherfaces.

3a8082e126