FANTASTIC!!! Excellent work Drew!

Now I officially bid farewell to AutoCAD... You will not be missed!

i could never spend $1,249 on this amazing program
ive been using cocreate and i guess ill just stick with that

i looked up his version

"$8,000" if im not mistaken

I'm gonna try to use this video using Rhinoceros trial.

Great tut! Helped a lot

it's amazing
Fantastic! Excellent work.

Is there an image? (video)

I only have sound...

Somebody knows?

Works OK for me. Quicktime is playing it properly.
Looks useful stuff. You can get a student 24 month licence for 50GBP (and offspring is student )

Just watched the 8 minute demo. You have a salesman voice, I swear.

I'll look into getting this.

I got all excited about this, and tried to download the 90 trial of Solidworks. Unfortunately, I don't have enough memory to run it
I'm going to try and use this info with Rhino 4. Thanks for the videos Drew!

Less than 6 months ago I had to rebuild everything in my computer except the harddrive. It all went kaput.

So I splurged a bit and for only spending $200 on the MOBO and RAM, and I think $80 on the vid card, it's a pretty sweet set up.

I was gifted a TB external drive, so I have plenty of space for programs and puzzles!

I -LOVED- how simple it was from CUBE to AXIS CUBE.

Is there any way to play with the cubes in here, though? Twist them around? I haven't finished watching the video, I'm just wondering.

yes there is, just apply the same method as rotating the cube, except select whichever row of pieces you want to move

Oh goodie! I can't wait to be all over this with jumbleable puzzles when I can make them.

I plan to redo the tutorial so I can be more formal and faster, then I'm gonna upload it to youtube

Solidworks should hire you to voice a commercial. I'd buy something if you were on the commercial, I think!

I dunno, I still wouldn't buy a snuggie...

I still need to pick one up! I love snuggies!

Awesome, I'll have to mess around with this later... I'm curious to experiment with the stuff you showed in the second video.


I messed around with some CAD a few years ago, but only recently got into puzzles, so haven't tried to make a puzzle in any CAD program yet. One thing I'm wondering, can you rotate the puzzle pretty much any degree around the axises(like you did in the video) and still have a functional puzzle? I can see that it might make the pieces thin in certain places, but as far as being able to turn would it be functional?

@Oogyboogawa:

The internal mechanism will always keep working given that your axis(es) of rotation intersect the origin of your part. The only thing that you need to worry about is that you could rotate it in such a way that the outside facelets could become quite tiny which is a pain.

Yeah, that's kinda what I meant when I said it looked like it could make them thin(though I guess the internal part of those pieces still wouldn't be thin?).

That's pretty cool, can't wait to mess around with it some. I think it'll be easier to wrap my head around once I get to play with it... and should help me understand more about how puzzles like the axis cube work.

Should've started downloading the trial for SW while I was watching the video lol, now I have to wait. Probably other stuff I should be doing anyway.

Trial is downloaded, I have work today, though.

This look like it'll better than inventor 2008 for sure.

I have to talk to my dad and see if he can get me a full copy of solidworks. He's an engineer and mostly uses autocad, but he should be able to get it through his work.

EDIT: Something I totally just realized! Save the video to your computer if you can, so you don't suck up all of drewseph's bandwidth.

Wow. I really should use Solidworks. Thanks for the tutorials!

By the way, you really should sell voiceovers to infomercials.

Just watched the second video since i don't have time to watch the first just now...I knew SW was powerful, but the things you were doing are incredible there! I would assume most of what you talk about in the first video i was able to figure out mostly yesterday, but i'm definitely still going to watch it when i can. Hugely informative, drew.

-CC10

That is what a tutorial is all about! Thanks, Drew!!!!
Not only do you show what to do, but explain what you are doing! And how it all works together!

Cheers,
Derek

So I got my regular 3x3 cube done, and was feeling pretty happy with it(didn't do the fillets or anything, yet). Then I decided I'd try rotating my cube and see what different cut patterns I could form. I decided to start with a 60 degree rotation and go from there.... but I'm thinking I messed something up somewhere, because this is what happened:




I'm guessing maybe I locked something to something I shouldn't have or didn't lock something to something I should have...

I believe your Body Move / Copy needs to be after your Circle Patterns.

Ah! Thanks! That fixed it(also, not that it would've been that big of a deal to redo that step, but it's cool that you can just click that step and drag it down a bit on the list so that it is performed later). Also, found out after I fixed that, that I hadn't made my sketch extend far enough beyond the cube to make the cuts for an axis cube, so extended them a bit and I've got the design for an axis cube now

Pretty satisfying for my first day opening a CAD program in years.

I just downloaded Solidworks and followed the full tutorial. Very, very nice job Drew! Totally changed my perspective on puzzle designs. I think this is a much better, more direct approach than the one Tyler posted and it can be adapted to almost anything.

Actually now that I think about it, the two tutorials are pretty similar in concept (revolving intersecting planes) but Drew's tutorial avoids booleans altogether. I already have plans for a few new puzzles.

Wow Drew, you just made my day! I've always wanted to learn how to use Solidworks ever since I got it for school, and now this! Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Now maybe I can quit asking people to make me designs.

Nice work there man. I'm glad people are seeing the power of designed intent.
For those of you who use Alibre, can't you do this kind of stuff too? I know it may not be as powerful, but I thought it still had this ability.

Also, this is no excuse to not watch tyler's make a mech video. Sure, you can make a 3x3x3 now, and some other shapes using this technique, but why not learn more while you're at it?

I only have sound also. I wonder why we can't see it.

Yes, I believe you can, but it would be much less straightforward. The command is "Revolve Cut" IIRC.

all it is using is an mp4 codec, fairly universal for all quicktime users.

If you can't see video, download quicktime (it's free) or quicktime alternative.

I have the klite codec pack installed with VLC and it worked fine.

Drew: I finished watching your video and i was able to whip this up in a few hours:


Obviously the mech parts aren't there for all the pieces, and i know it's because of my sketch profile...it's basically a V1 Gigaminx in that it's based off of the ES 5x5 mech, so i just need to make the profile match the profile of a 5x5 more, then i should be able to get the mech correct. This is the second profile i've tried, but i know what i need to fix.

Just posted this to show how easy it is to use Drew's method. Yes, i have previous CAD experience but all of this is totally new to me...so that's a testament to the method's ease-of-use. Great job on the tutorial Drew, i'll be using it for a couple puzzles i have in mind. Much easier than the way i was planning on doing them (not EXACTLY tyler's method, but similar to).

-CC10

Are we getting another Gigaminx Designer? Yay!
I think i should work on one too (But im a n00b, lol)

Solidworks is too large (in file size) for me. I'll stick on Alibre for now. =P

Yeah, i'd like to have a nice gigaminx of my own design, but i'm having trouble adapting the mech to that of a v-cube (I fixed the ES 5x5-based mech and the pieces were nearly exactly those of a V1 gigaminx). Here's my profile for my attempted V2-esque design:

Based off of the V-cube 5x5 profile:


SW won't even do the revolved surface correctly. Can anybody help me troubleshoot why this profile is wrong?

Note: It's unlikely that i'll be making a gigaminx straight-away...i'd like to make my hyperminx first, so this design's just going to be there for later i guess. And if I DO make a gigaminx i'll make sure the design isn't too terribly similar to the V2, just out of respect the designer.

-CC10

EDIT: the profiles i'm attempting to revolve (sorry, forgot to include them. It was a bit unclear from the first image):

This isn't really my method so much as what Adam taught me. lets just call it the revolve path method.

as for your v cube style mechanism, you need to make sure you build your arms out of arcs instead of straight lines. pick your origin point as the starting point and then draw out the under and top side arc for the arms, you can then move the points to lock onto specific parts

Thanks for the videos. Cool to see another persons approach to modeling a puzzle.

Have you ever used the convert entities command. Instead of tracing out everything again on your sketch (Around minute 23). Just create a new sketch. Click all the lines you want to copy and then click convert entities. Ill make those lines in your new sketch. ( I believe with all your relations in tact.) Also works with edges of surfaces/solids. Can even be used to convert items into 3d sketches as well.

I had no clue! thanks for the tip!

Here's my favorite use for that command:
Say you have an edge at some weird angle off in the distance. Well, you can do the "Convert entities" on that edge when editing the sketch to have it projected directly onto the plane you're working on.

Great tutorial Drew!

One thing that I can't figure out, however, is how to make a dodecahedron. I'm sure it's something that I'm just overlooking.

Can anyone give a quick explanation on how to achieve this? Thanks.

- Billy

Puzzlemaster42 kindly posted iges files for a dodecahedron and a icosahedron here.

I appreciate that, but I was hoping to create it myself.

Any ideas? Thanks.

- Billy

I created a half-dodecahedron using my own method:

Sketch equilateral pentagon, extrude by two mm from midpoint
Create 5 axes from the points on the pentagon's sketch, one on each side face of the extruded pentagon
Circular pattern the extrusion around the created axes using the dihedral angle
Cut one mm down from each of the six faces to get rid of excess material
Fill the shell with whatever method you want.

Not necessarily the best or most elegant way to do it, but it works.

-CC10

Wow......

Finally got around to downloaded this.

WAYYYY better than CoCreate. I managed to design a V3 (something I could never figure out how to do in CoCreate) in under 2 hours after I downloaded it.

Methinks I'm gonna be mighty bored next year in CAD class...

I didn't watch that video to see if it's the same method or not, but here's what I did:

Make 12 planes in the shape of a dodecahedron(rotate them 116.565 degrees off of each other).
Make a large solid, doesn't matter the shape or how big it is as long as it completely engulfs the dodecahedron shape you made).
Use the Insert-cut-"with surface" command 12 times to gradually whittle down the large solid you made until it is dodecahedron shape.



I actually started out by sketching a pentagon, and then using the move/copy command to create a dodecahedron with that... but it wasn't solid, and I couldn't figure out how to make it one. And I was having trouble getting it to let me cut the large solid I made around it with those faces for some reason, so I just made a plane that corresponded with each face and used those to cut.


Kind of a roundabout way of getting there once I did all of that, but I did end up with a nice dodecahedron, so at least it works.

Oh my God let me tell you. The Filleting on this seems so much easier on this. Unfortunately the video was removed now (Sad face) but i got the jest of it. WAY easier than Auto CAD fillet-ing. I hate fillet-ing with AutoCAD. Thanks Drew.

I -DID- say you should've saved it.

If anyone is interested, I'll see if I can email you the videos, and if you really need me to I can convert it from mp4 to something else.