CAD software

[ibetuner]

Terry:

I've got a lead for "useful CAD software" for you but remember you never mentioned cost.

I spent last Thanksgiving at my daughters house in Cool, CA and one of her guests was a design engineer. He likes the artistic side of design rather that the practical side and when I asked if he could design a piano bridge he asked me some questions, broke out his computer and jumped at the chance. In nothing flat, from the information I gave him, he had a bridge layout in the computer.

I asked if he could make a basic bridge template and then plug in the desired specs for a cutter to machine the bridge.  He said yes but it would be a "little" more complicated. 

If duplicating a bridge it could probably be scanned with a laser and cut out with a piece of equipment designed to do the job. The big hang-up of course is cost and that's another whole different field of questioning and research. 

 I was amazed at how fast he used the program...not easy in the beginning for him but he's been doing it for eleven years now.

I also have a client (who by the way has an observatory in his back yard) who has a business building digital imaging cameras and he uses the same program...Solidworks. Hang-up again is cost...$5000. Probably not something you'd find in a piano shop. But then again if you have bigger ambitions about producing more accurately, more quickly and in greater numbers it may be the program to check out.


Wayne Lutzow
Twelve Tone Piano Service
Lincoln, CA


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Terence Miller 
  To: pianotech list 
  Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 1:01 PM
  Subject: CAD software


  Hello List:

  Does anyone have any feelings about the CAD software they use?

  I just attended an all-day seminar that emphasized the value of precision in our work and reminded me that much of what we do is really based on geometry. 

  Put those together and there seems to be a real use for CAD software in the shop.


  I hate spending money, and I especially hate spending money on a pig-in-a-poke**. If you haven't already noticed, the software industry has forced the P-I-A-P market model upon us. Not only can you not try the product to see if it fits, many 'License Agreements' remind you that you do not own what you have just purchased. (and NO you can not return it if you have broken the seal the envelope!) Imagine yourfavoriteclothingstore without dressing rooms...and as soon as you touch a product you have to buy it.

  Even if software is availabe as 'freeware' it often takes 20 hours or more of mucking around in the program to get a sense of whether it will be useful to your project. And then there is the issue of actually working efficiently inside the program...was it written by a human being who actually has to face the problems the software is supposed to resolve, or by the youngest programmer chained to a bench in some programming galley off the coast of wherever? Oh, and does the original language for the programming, menus and documentation happen to be English? (always a nice but unexpected touch.)

  So, any leads for useful CAD software?

  thanks

  Terry


  **Wikipedia has a cute article on 'a pig in a poke'.





  ** see Wikipedia for a cute description





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