Recent content by SherpaDoug

I have a couple of Printrbots and use Cura 15. I can't get any of the newer Curas to run. Using Cura 2 or 3 they will Home, run the axes, turn on and off the fans, but won't heat or print.

My Alibre has the Y axis pointing what appears on the screen to be up. X points to the upper right, and Z to the lower right. This has not been an issue until I started designing parts of 3D printing. Now I find I instinctively visualize the XZ plane as the build plate of the printer. As a...

I found the answer. You need to use "Unfold" not "Flat Pattern." Then create a new drawing specifying 1:1 scale, Top view only, and in "More Options" check "Project as Flat Pattern."

I have modeled a sheet metal (sheet cardboard) part and I can unfold it with flat pattern. But how do I export it as something like a .dwg file so I can feed it to my laser cutter? There must be an obvious way that I just can't find.

OK, That works. If you open the tutorial from the top menu "Tutorials" item of the Alibre launcher the left pane is empty. You have to use the "Help" menu item to get left pane populated. So the "Tutorials" menu item only works for single page tutorials.

When I open a multi-page tutorial, such as "Sheet Metal" or "Cylinder Head Cover" I don't see any way to get past the first page. There are no forward arrows or "next" buttons. There is no vertical slider on the right. How do you get to page 2?

Thanks guys, lots of ideas to work with. I wanted to make sure I was not missing an obvious solution. I am an Electrical engineer and 3D drafting of gear trains is way on the edge of my skill set.

I need to place several gears in mesh in a gearbox. I don't really need to model the gear teeth, but they are commercial gears and I would prefer to use the manufacturer's STEP models if I can. I could also model them as simple disks. But is there an easy can I use Assembly Constraints to...

Thanks, I got it! The triad with rings does not show up until you pick a face to rotate. I then used "Precise Placement" to get exactly 90 deg around the X axis. Too bad you loose all the sketch history when you do this. It looks like if I want to revise the part I will have to modify the...

I don't think mirroring on any combination of the principle planes is going to help. Do I need to use a 45 degree plane somehow? It sounds like the Boolean unite trick might do the job, but for me the axes rotate in step with the part rotation so nothing useful happens. Maybe I am not doing...

I made a beautiful part to produce on my 3D printer with one problem. I made the part on edge. Think of the Eiffel tower pointing East instead of Up. There are probably 3rd party G-code tools to fix the printer files but I would rather fix the problem at its source in the Alibre part model...

I want to make a tube with radial holes like a heat shield around a muffler, but I can't figure out how to start! I can make a tube but do I need to add tangent planes and sketches for each hole or is there something simpler? SherpaDoug Alibre v11.2

I am trying to use Alibre Design v11.2 to export a STL file to Pronterface/slic3r for my Printrbot. For now I am trying to use the Alibre tutorial part Pull_Handle.stp. I export the STL file using default settings. I can see the part in EasyFIT or Netfabb studio, but slic3r says it detects no...

Ah Ha! From the assembly tools "Insert new Part" is the key command I was missing. This is not in any of the tutorials I have gone through. They all show building an assembly from completed parts, not going backwards. I then went down the wrong path, looking to merge sketches from two parts...

I have an assembly consisting of a bearing downloaded from a vendor website, and a shaft I have built up from basic geometry. It all looks nice in 3D. Next I have to design a bushing to fill the annular gap between these parts. I would like to view the assembly, select a plane that bisects the...