Dears

Any Idea to develop a new CAD program?

I want to do it for my academic project, - to develop a new CAD program from scratch (with VB,VC+ or Python etc)

any comments, please post here

 

I am unsure what the "driver" is here - whether it is a means to an end (to achieve some academic qualification) - or to do something worth while that is of real benefit to engineers out there?

Assuming it is something to be of real benefit to engineers out there - I would approach the problem differently. I would take an existing 3D CAD package - and ask myself the question - what is poor about it - or what could work more efficiently with that package? I would then develop these features (as bolt on features) - and then - try and sell your "improvements" to the 3D CAD producer.

With the above in mind - I would take Solidworks - which I think is a very good package - and do some "bolt on" improvements to it.

I occasionally need to import aerofoil section into Solidworks - for the design of propellers. A propeller - is typically composed of 10 different sizes of aerofoils - and which are rotationally inclined to the previous aerofoil section. To do this in Solidworks is incredibly laborious. The options are:-

You can use "design variables" in Solidworks - on an Excel Spreadsheet - but there are approximately 250 points - which is 750 XYZ numbers to input - and then you have to set up all the design variables to start with - incredibly laborious.

You can generate the points in an Excel spreadsheet - for all the 10 different aerofoil sizes - but then you have to break each of the aerofoils up into a set of points for the front face - and the back face - since the Solidworks Curve feature has a bad habit of creating a "blip" on the curve - particularly if the change in curvature is very large - which happens at the top and bottom faces of the aerofoil.
So to get the points from the Excel master sheet - into Solidworks - is another tedious process - copy the top half aerofoil points into another Excel spreadsheet - and then save them as a text file. So you end up with one master Excel spreadsheet - 20 other Excel spreadsheets - and 20 text files. However, we have only just begun. You now need to import the points - so you end up with 20 curves. However, you can't rotate a Solidworks curve - so you need to convert each curve - and then break the relationship with the curve - and then you need to modify the sketch - to achieve the rotational inclination of each of the aerofoil sections with respect to the previous one - as I described above.

It is an unbelievably tedious process - that is in need of an enhancement. However, I guess there are very few Solidworks users - who are designing propellers - so it is not worth Solidworks scarce resources to improve the system. However, if you came up with something to improve this - they might be very happy - as I would too.

I am sure there are lots of other things like this example - that could be improved.

Hope this helps.