See the last paragraph of my original post
I am interested in this. I have prior teaching experience at the college and junior college levels ( back in the dark ages… ). I have taken the HAAS class, but never did the domino. Getting caught up and gaining some proficiency is on my to-do list.
Not sure if this is the right time to take this class or not. I would like to take the refresher course Walter posted about in another thread too. On the first pass I found the CAD/CAM parts much easier to grasp than the machine part of the course. I think the simulator being integrated into the training would be a big plus. When I took the class, the parts at the machine I could not see from the back. Working a webcam and a projector into the training might be worth looking into to help students see the operator panel.
The two course will be covering the same material, this one will focus less on ‘teaching’ and more on collaboration on the class material.
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Please count me in. I’m already using a HAAS in the real world but am not authorized for unsupervised access here since we lost the license before I got that far. I do my work in Inventor and MasterCam so I’m gonna have to learn the CAM portion anyway and will be happy to help teaching in any capacity after that.
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Okay, apparently the powers that be have exercised their mojo and made this event/class active on the calendar already. If your interested, please sign up. I will approve or send you an email asking for more information.
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@zmetzing is it possible to transfer from the Tuesday Plasma class to the Thursday Plasma class so I can attend this class on Tuesday? Or will the Plamsa class actually run that late?
Could not make the class… got stuck working… 
How was the class?
@wandrson I will get with you personally… I’ve seen the course material already.
I think it went well. there were 7 of us all interested in helping out. the discussion after the class was just as interesting. I think we all see a need for some basic CAD (fusion360, inventor, solidworks) specific classes beyond the domino class as they have farther use in 3d printing, wood CNC and the haas.
I think we’ll probably all want to sit in in Walter’s first class before we get turned loose. cheers!
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Seems there is a LOT of push for a CAD class… I would say that all parties interested in such should be on the every Friday webex from autodesk, and I would highly recommend that all parties be connected to NYC CNC. I don’t honestly think I know who the best person would be to teach a CAD class… I do a LOT of CAD work, but it’s not my job. Likewise, which of those three would we teach??
Webinar - https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7163011869704584449
I guess if the class was generic and could be applied to all three of those installations that would work… but again - Who has that skill set. 
Bleuler, Bleuler, Bleuler…
IMO, the best person will be whomever chooses to do so. Particularly for basic introductory course, the teacher doesn’t need to be an expert, they simply need to know more then the students (presumably little to nothing) for a basic course.
Having spent a fair bit of time with Inventory, looked at Solidworks, and now truly attached to Fusion 360, I believe 360 is the better choice of the three for most of our members. It seems the best geared to the occasional or hobbyist. Unlike the others, if one later decides to perform commercial work, the cost for Fusion 360 to do that is orders of magnitude more affordable.
In any case, any one of the packages is capable of producing machine ready designs for any (and all) of our CNC machines (3D printers, CNC router, CNC Plasma, Shapeko, and HAAS). I think this type of class would have the greatest effect in allowing members to make the best use of the space.
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I spent the morning hashing out a plan for a basic CAD modeling class. This should probably be a separate thread but in the interest of getting feedback from the people in last nights meeting I’ll keep it here for now.
Ive come up with the idea of modeling a 2x4 post Lego piece. It’s a fairly simple part but it touches on a good number of CAD basics. I would provide an engineering print so people would work ahead if the want or have a reference if they miss the dimensions I give them. I’ll be modeling the same part from the same print and going through each step and demonstrating a few different ways to do each as well as which method I think yields the best result.
I don’t think it will be too much information or a “fire hose” as it was termed in last nights discussion. My only concern is that I do CAD for a living and things that are obvious to me may not compute to the earliest of beginners. I’ll be teaching my ‘class’ to my wife this afternoon. She is what I would consider an early beginner so hopefully I get some practice explaining things in a way that makes sense to someone woefully unmechanically inclined.
An added bonus would be that the part you will have modeled by the end of class is ready to be exported as an IGES or Step file for 3D printing if you so choose. I’d also like to talk about considerations to take while building a CAD model for certain manufacturing processes but might save that for a more advanced class.
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@wandrson from my relatively basic understanding of Fusion 360, the CAD side is basically a watered down version of Inventor. Autodesk took all the basic functions of Inventor and used them as tha CAD portion of 360
I believe the biggest difference is the user interface. Both Inventor and Solidworks have a UI that feels like it grew organically as the software added features…
Fusion 360 seems to have been designed from the ground up with a consistent and concise UI. I spent about 18months with Inventor and at the end I could design some basic things, but I would spend most of my time looking for the features and fuction in the cumbersome UI…
This was the most complicated thing I designed in Inventor, and it took me about 40 hours, and would likely take me about the same amount of time if I tried to redo it in Inventor. I could do it in Fusion 360, in a couple of hours.
To date, I haven’t found anything that Fusion can’t do that Inventor can. But I am no expert.
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This is true of fusion360 - yes.
but they are adding more and more and more features to it.
The user base for Fusion is actually very vocal and as such they update it very often.
i think that is a good start as an exercise on basic CAD for multiple diciplines. but from my perspective - there is CAD and then there is CAD for machining. A good majority of machined parts boil down to body, holes, pockets, extrusions and fillets. Your part looks good and covers 3 of the five. One good addition would be to follow up with the bottom of the part - which on a real lego is mostly hollow (pocket) and has receivers (holes) for the tubes. together they cover a lot of basic machining concepts. and of course it doesn’t have to be all in one class.
Are you planning to do this in fusion360? I wish I could help but am only getting started in f360 although I’m Inventor savvy enough to do something related but different. Anyway, GOOD STUFF and thanks for considering doing this.
-Nick
@nicksilva I modeled the internals as well, they just weren’t visible in the first photo. There are some more considerations needed for this model to be machinable but that’s the sort of thing I was talking about with a Design for Machining and Design for Assembly sort of class.
I only considered Inventor because that is what I’m proficient with. I may start out teaching Inventor and transition to fusion 360 once I knock off all the rust from using it when if first came out.
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THAT’S what I’m talking 'bout! that one part covers a lot. cheers!
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Awesome… you’ve started the first step towards the Alum Lego…
Might steal this lol
Come to my class and you’ll have a part file ready to go! I’d like to teach a class to the people on this thread (discussed last night) to get some feedback before I offer one to the masses. Is there a way to setup a class that requires approval? I joined a week ago and the procedural side of DMS is still somewhat of a mystery to me.
