Good morning,
I'm completely new to CAD and this is my first modeling project in a very very long time, so long as you count modeling third party characters and other game models in the original Half Life engine. I was also a novice mapmaker in Counter Strike back when it was painful.
Anyway, I am having A LOT of issues in Alibre Design Expert V28 including, but not limited to, the following.
- My model keeps freaking out on me in various ways such as plopping this dark gray grid over the view of my part.
- perhaps I should switch to inches?
- perhaps I should switch to inches?
- How do I get rid of the gray? I'm working in mm.
- Will that affect anything?
- Is there a reason for this?
- Some print on demand websites ask for the file to be in specific measurement units.
2. When trying to create new shapes in the project I am required to start from a point, but many corners on the part do not have points inherently. Is there an easy way to add points automatically or even manually place them by clicking on a location and a reference point and then specify the exact location along the edge?
3. Am I going about this whole thing the wrong way? Here's the process I followed (keep in mind that I am clicking around a LOT looking for things... I just opened this for the first time last night but even following the tutorials I can find, my results do not match behavior in their example):
1. New part
2. orient myself to my origin point
3. create first rectangle and specify my exact dimensions
4. extrude to create a solid rectangular cube (this is the process I should take, right? I am going to be removing a lot of material basically to create a hallow shell with various contours.
5. create a new sketch to extrude out a chunk of the main body
6. extrude
7. I managed to get to this point and somewhere in here I keep running into issues.
I started periodically saving a backup of my whole my project because I manage to basically break the project.
I might be wrong, but I think I'm breaking it while adding a new sketch and clicking a point to start a new shape accidentally clicking the middle mouse button or left and right mouse at once out of habit trying to pan my view before finishing my dimensions.
This causes the length to go to a crazy high value and even if I hit escape and reset my view my entire extrusion gets broken and highlighted red saying, "position undefined," if I remember correctly.
Do I need to add planes to the other two sides to efficiently model against them? I'm not sure how to make the point issue easier.
Either way, I'm at what I think is a safe save spot.
This is going to be 3D printed if that matters.
Please see attached file.
8. How can I select an entire extrusion shape and move it to another point?
- Is there an easy way to do this?
9. Why can't we map mouse buttons!? This is a travesty.
- I mean honestly... Why can't I even select just left mouse + keyboard here?
- Why can't I select space bar!?
10. This forum won't let me upload my zip file.
