So I had this idea over the weekend and I wanted to throw it out there to see if anyone would be interested. My thinking is this - for me, the most tedious, unrewarding, and sometimes time consuming part of designing in CAD is taking the time to draft all of the various "extras" - motors, batteries, servos, , engine mounts, rec'vers, horns, screws, bolts etc. I'd much rather be working on wings, fuse, tail, struts, hey anything but a servo. So it occurred to me that 1) I'm probably not the only person that feels this way and 2) using the forum here, we could distrubute that workload. My idea is this - people post CAD 3 views of these common (albiet boring) parts of drafting - so that if you say need to see how some Hitec HS-81 servos will fit, or are designing a plane with a MP Jet motor for the first time, you could first check the "parts bin" to see if anyone has previously drafted these items, thus saving you time. Anyone else like this idea? I think it would be a huge time saver to all of us here (myself included, I'm not going to pretend this is totally not without benefit to yours truly) and that it would make it far easier to see how different motors may or may not fit your current design etc. Okay, first things first, if this is going to work, we HAVE to agree on a file format. I would say .dxf - but I'm not sure if we should do R14, R12 or 2000 - but that's just my vote - this would have to be a consensus thing - what do you folks think - any interest? worth doing? which format?

Regards

-Sky

Been done. Search this forum for "blocks" or "symbols". Should come up with a lot of links.

I'll see if I can find my list.

There are some sources...
First, you can download a zipped file of the stuff in the attached image from my site, (free) at http://homepage.mac.com/mikejames/rc...drcdesign.html

Then, check here for a collection of various people's contributions:

http://www.rccadparts.deathkeep.com/

Thanks Mike! Yours is one of the links I have.

As to what flavor DXF? Acad Version 12 seems to be compatable with most CAD software that can import the file format. Always best to have the same format as the software you are using.

Well I searched on symbols and blocks (whew! we can search again!) and I guess I should have been more specific - I'm doing electric only at this point, and tyipcally around the parkflyer size of models. Those links are fantastic, but they seem to either be geared toward larger gas powered models, or they link to entire plans and not parts. There seems to be s distinct lack of e-flight 3 views of these parts - micro servos, motors, motor mounts, etc. I'm hoping that others on here will also be interested in posting and using these parts - so if you have a 3 view of your favorite servo, motor, lipo battery, or whatever, please post away! DXF of the AutoCAD Version 12 is fine by me - so please if you can post your file in this format. If you cannot convert to this format, just send you file along to me and I will do it for you.

-Sky

Looks like you/we may have to start our own 3-view DXF blocks file for the smaller stuff. I'll go through some of the blocks I've made and collected to see what I have.

What CAD program do you have?

I use TurboCAD, but it opens DXF's of R14, R12 and 2000 just fine, and saves them as well.

Here is a basic 3 view of the Hitec MG-125. Open it as a new drawing and let me know what you find. Should be the body as a block and the arm as a block.

Here's an AXI 2208 Series Motor - Should be a Front and Side/Top view as separate blocks. Hope someone finds this useful.

-Sky

How did the DXF come into your T-CAD?

It was perfect, no problems at all

Good! Lets set some design and draw rules;

Don't use polylines or force line widths.

Don't force line types. Don't make lines hidden or other wise.

Don't force line colors. Leave them white (black if you using a white back ground).

Draw everything on the first layer. Layer zero in Acad.

Label all taped holes and shaft diametes. Just a simple text statement without leaders should do it.

Don't use fancy text fonts. Use the most basic that the program comes with.

Purge the drawing of all extranious data. Those fancy fonts and extra blocks.

This will result in a clean basic drawing that can be tweaked by the designer that wants to use it.

The servo drawing I posted should have been mostly clean. If anyone runs into problems importing it into thier flavor of CAD let me know.

Hey SoCal -
I went back and changed my file to reflect the standards you set up - if you have a sec check if out and let me know if it's acceptable. I'm still very new to CAD, so I'm sure there's a newbie blunder or two in there. Also I realized that when I converted from metric to english it didn't convert right, so my motor was like 30 inches long....whooops!!

-Sky

A unit is a unit is a unit. CAD doesn't care. Better to use a base 10 than the feet-inches we are stuck with. I just have a very difficult time thinking in silly-meters so I draw in old world factors.

Acad had the ability to have a second dimension based on a factor. I'll turn this on when needed. Since you should be drawing in real world sizes you shouldn't over ride the dimension text.

I went through your block too. Take a look.

Thanks for going through the file, the changes you made seem to make sense. So you're saying that I should draw in real world size (which I did - in this case the info from the AXI spec was in millimeters) and then not care about the unit conversion? Should I just have left the original in millimeters? Thanks SoCal!

-Sky