Robot deign software

[parisa]

Hi all
I am looking for a software for robot design.I saw in the 'Sumo Robot Construction' tutorial that
the Autodesk CAD was used.But I'm not sure which of the Autodesk's products
(namely AutoCAD,Autodesk Inventor,...)is useful for robotics design for beginner to intermediate.
Can anyone help me please?
Cheers.

[annoyin_kid]

try google sketch-up. we use it in our school and it is quite easy to get the hang of.

[hgordon]

What is your objective ?  Are you trying to build a model that can run in a 3D robot simulator such as Player/Stage/Gazebo or Microsoft Robotics Studio or Webots ?  Or are you modeling a robot for fabrication ?

We used SolidWorks to model our robot, since the machine shop could work directly from those files - here's a photo of the model - http://www.surveyor.com/images/SRV1-050706.jpg .  We subsequently exported the model to VRML so that it could be imported into Webots and MSRS, though we don't have an MSRS simulation working yet.

[dcole07]

Is SolidWorks free?

There website isn't so clear... looks like there is a translater for AutoCAD, a viewer, and a what ever else...

[hgordon]

SolidWorks is expensive ($6k or thereabouts), but I believe some low-cost student editions are available

[TK]

I am new and also looking for software if you find any please tell me and you might want to look at the soft ware squeak i can't install it but maybe you can

[Admin]

I use Autodesk Inventor, which costs about $1,295. Its really nice easy software, and I like it better than SolidWorks . . . but it has annoying bugs like random crashing and constraint detection issues . . .

www.autodesk.com

JesseWelling also recommended this one, which is free:
http://juergen-riegel.net/FreeCAD/Docu/index.php/Main_Page

[ed1380]

I like google sketchup, becuase it is easier to make many shapes there, compared with solidoworks. but for real complicated stuff where you want to have every part defined then get solidworks. trust me it is hard to learn solidworks, so many options. Also you need a pretty good computer to use those programs.

Autocad is based on shapes more.
I've seen a student edition of solidwords for $90.

[groovy9]

Here's another vote for Sketchup.  But keep in mind that it's not meant to for precision engineering.  It's for "sketching" your design, as the name would imply.

It's good enough for a regular Joe to visualize how everything will fit together than then go cut out the parts.  It's not good enough for professional mechanical design.

It's also really cool and really easy to use, especially if you follow some of the online tutorials.

[JonHylands]

I use Rhino3D, but it isn't free...

- Jon

[ed1380]

Here's another vote for Sketchup.  But keep in mind that it's not meant to for precision engineering.  It's for "sketching" your design, as the name would imply.

It's good enough for a regular Joe to visualize how everything will fit together than then go cut out the parts.  It's not good enough for professional mechanical design.

It's also really cool and really easy to use, especially if you follow some of the online tutorials.

You can imput the dimensions if that helps with acuracy.

[Hal9000]

I do like Sketchup a lot, mainly because it's free