I’ve been welding some racks for the front of bikes but had a break after Rose was born.
I am thinking of incorporating some other materials other than flat bar and tubing.
Does anyone know of a tool I could download that was either free or cheap that I could use before cutting and welding steel etc?
There’s not much out there for racks that’s better than Cr-Mo tubing in ~10x0.8mm. Great combination of weight/strength/stiffness. Thin rod or smaller tubes are flexy, larger are overkill unless you’re building something for serious load carrying, carbon steel is weaker, aluminium will fatigue and fail, titanium is expensive, hard to work and requires larger tubes to be as stiff and heavier wall to be as strong.
Sketchup is pretty intuitive and it’s free. I’ve never tried using it for things that aren’t walls and windows and roofs though.
If you want tospend a small amount of time learning, get Rhino. It’s pretty much designed for what you want to do by the sound of it. And before you know it you’ll be in this thread
Rhino is a surface modeler, solid modeler or wireframe modeler. Or you can use it as an Autocad like 2d drafter. It’s pretty versitile and way less complicated to pick up and use than any autodesk product.
I agree it’s probably overkill for what Aaron wants though. Just get a pen and paper.
I haven’t used Rhino in about 4 years, back then it was just a surface modeller, that’s when I became an Autodesk fanboi! Learn something new every day!
Sketch up. Solidworks (weldments segment of the program would speed up production as well) or Rhino. Both the later aren’t programs you can learn ‘overnight’.