CAD and 3D PDFs for showing and sharing designs

[Jason Magruder]

How many of you use CAD for designing knives?

Did you know that you can save a CAD file to a 3d PDF that works on pretty much any computer?

I've been using Alibre CAD for a couple of years now but mostly just for folders. Anyway, I was messing around tonight and drew up a couple of quick sketches of a fighter to try different blade shapes out. I saved them as PDFs so I could show them to my brother and I figured many of you might not know you could do this.

Here's a download link to the files.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60753536/okca fighter.pdf
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60753536/okca bowie.pdf

They should open in Adobe Reader just fine. You can show or hide the various components and rotate it to any angle. I don't think there is a way to move the parts relative to each other though. I've tried to get it to work with some folder designs in the past and they show up fine but don't open or close


I just wanted to share with you guys an easy way to show a design to a customer in a way that they can really look it over before committing to the final design. In my experience most people are not very good at visualizing things in three dimensions (or two for that matter) so anything that can help show the overall proportions and feel of a design is helpful.

 

[JayGoliath]

I used Solidworks and my friend uses Microsoft Visio.
Since you mentioned about the Alibre i use Adobe Acrobat 9 Extended to do the same but i have to convert my part/Assembly files to .stp (Step file) and then create a PDF from it.

 

[daizee]

I use a lousy cad program to make drawings, but will be shifting mine to DraftSight soon. I may have to re-create everything. Anyway, you can always print to pdf instead of to a printer. Works great!

-Daizee