Re: threads in 3D CAD

Roland

This came up now when I received from someone that I am working with a drawing of a Z axis leadscrew assembly. The drawing had been done in Rhino, and I was surprised that the leadscrew was depicted simply as a rod. Looks like something is really wrong - where's the screw? So the first desire is for realistic technical illustration. The second need is to make parts on a lathe that I am planning on converting to CNC.

It may be that I was just exposed to an advanced & expensive 3D CAD program in those trade school classes, and developed unrealistic expectations of what software that I could afford would do. Or maybe I'm even misremembering what Inventor could do, and it was in Mastercam that the threads were generated - but that program is out of reach also, of course.

So maybe I should rephrase my question: If I want to be able to produce realistic illustrations of threaded parts, how much do I have to spend on software. And then I guess the second half is what is the normal workflow for turned parts that have threaded sections - is it typical for threads to be not shown in the CAD drawing, but added in CAM?

TIA

Steve

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, Roland Jollivet <Roland.Jollivet@...> wrote:
>
> Is is not because it generally not necessary? Since the thread is very much
> a function of the tool used, it's just a simple move in G-code with the
> selected tool. If you wanted something fancy, like a corkscrew, you'd have
> to model it in any case.
>
> Maybe one should first ask; what are you trying to do?
>
> Regards
> Roland
>
>
> On 21 February 2013 03:47, scyvt <scy@...> wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > Hello group
> >
> > Some years ago I took several trade school classes in CNC. The software
> > was Inventor and Mastercam. Although I knew that I could never afford to
> > own either, using them in class conditioned my expectations of what
> > software should do, and I assumed that over time less costly programs would
> > come to offer similar capabilities.
> >
> > Getting to the point, IIRC, parametric generation of threads of virtually
> > any spec was easy in Inventor, and I assumed that some similar, if not so
> > elegant, capability would be included in any 3D modeling application. Now I
> > have just learned to my great surprise that Rhino, which had become my aim
> > to acquire, has no thread modeling capabilities.
> >
> > So my question is: do most 3D CAD have integral parametric thread
> > generators, or is this considered a special capability?
> >
> > TIA
> > Steve
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>