Who does 3D modeling?

Anybody here adept at 3D modeling?

Is it your business, your hobby, your passion?

What do you do with it? What do you hope to do with it?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I bend SolidWorks to my will for a living.

I have some stuff I will post in the morning. I studied CAD in school, but didn't want it for a job. I left it alone for 10 years or so and then started doing it again in conjunction with my Challenge car build.

Solidworks, the current top level assembly for the project I'm working on is well over 600 parts, total saved model filesize is approaching 2gb. many of the 600 parts were assemblies that got saved as dumb parts to save space. 8gb of ram is not enough and requires caching to the hard drives. I have a request in to IT for 16gb of ram.

Oh and it is for work.

Previously I have used Pro-E and Inventor.

I do a bit of solid works when called for. Not as much as I used to.

Engineering student, used it a bit when I was building/designing cars for the school.

I can still strike a pose but my days on the catwalk are over.

As long as you're not showing any examples of your 3D giant purple snorklewacker.

I use Pro E at work. Currently routing fluid lines on big trucks. not very glorious "oh this line appears to be hitting the casting, okay ill move it 5mm." yay.

I use Solidworks at a design & custom fab studio. We have some powerful CAM software that is a SW plugin. It does make my Core I5, 8gb RAM tower seem slow.

So basically, I design and then use it for CNC output.

I currently work at a well known exhibit design firm as the detailer. Before that I was a detailer at a large exhibit fabrication place. I've used just about every solid modeler out there and played with most surface modeler/renderers too. Currently we have a seat of inventor for me but I'm the only one here who needs a solid modeler. Inventor/solidworks is 6 one, 1/2 dozen another unless you have a particular need that one does a little better. In our case, being able to go back and forth with drawings between inventor and acad, which everyone has, was a necessity. Got into the programming side of Inventor (VBA) some at my last job, too. My job distilled is to collaborate design direction from my peers, figure out how you can actually make everything, then produce drawings and language to ensure the exhibit fabricator produces what we want. Sometimes it's simple acad sketches, sometimes it's complex 3D models (84' long 2'x4" organically shaped ribbon with embedded LED panels the whole length of one side that's supposed to look like it's just floating in the air is the current fun.)

current hobby plans include a small cnc mill/router at home in the not too distant future. many exhibits are made by cnc routing panel goods to fit together however needed.

i spilled the beans, your turn

SolidWorks monkey.

fritzsch wrote: I use Pro E at work. Currently routing fluid lines on big trucks. not very glorious "oh this line appears to be hitting the casting, okay ill move it 5mm." yay.

You must work for Caterpillar too...

I draw in Inventor and 3D print using ReplicatorG software on a Makerbot or a Z corp printer (with it's own software).

It's part of my job.

video example

I also spend time in the Thingiverse getting ideas for parametric drawings.

In reply to SVreX:

Almost everyday. ProE. I've also used Catia and Solid Works, but neither compare favorably to ProE, at least for the kind of work I do.

Solidworks here at work (aluminum foundry). I mostly use it to model our casting setups for importing into a filling and solidification simulation package.

Solidworks and MasterCAM. I use them for rocket engine parts and assemblies at work.

I use sketchup to help with designing furniture I probobly will never build. It may be 3D modeling 'lite' compared to some of the more professional programs but the free version works very well for woodworkers.

Solidworks nearly every day, with some AutoCAD for legacy drawings. Shock absorbers for heavy/military vehicles.

The more Bic Mac's I eat, the more 3D my modeling is

I'm an architect and use SketchUp all the time for a design tool. Starting my first real project in Revit. Neither of those is big on "solid" modeling, but they are in 3D.

I frankly love SketchUp for doing my design work because it is so easy to try out new shapes and massing options. However, it is still firmly rooted in the rectilinear world, and not as good for complex curves, etc.

Solid Edge monkey. 3D Modeling, Drawings, FEA, Motion, Rendering, Wire Routing, etc. I get to do it everything but CAM (no in-house manufacturing here) and CFD (no software). Also run internal training for it where I work.

Sometimes it wrecks my RAM usage... http://content.screencast.com/users/prodarwin/folders/Jing/media/152d3012-d0f5-480b-a5a1-991c62b25687/2012-02-16_1107.png (Nastran single-threaded process - can only tap into one core)

I do it for work. Also hobby stuff. Also side-contracting stuff. You name it.

I use Solidworks a lot at work.

Here is some of the work I've done in 3D Studio Max...

And then the chassis rendering (from 1970's blueprints) in SketchUp...

As stated by Duke, SketchUp really doesn't like curves, or even complex angles; but it is quick and easy if you need to mock something up.

I use Alibre to design some of the components for various DIYAutoTune.com products, and Moray/POV-Ray to create illustrations for websites (my avatar was modeled with it), books, and I even did some of the illustrations for a GRM article with it.

SVreX wrote: Inquiring minds want to know.

So, who are these inquiring minds, and what do they have planned?