Hello everyone

I recently got a copy of autocad and autodesk inventor through the student package they have. Now these are excellent programs and I understand a lot of things, but I still don't know how to make a twisty puzzle. Many google searches have not returned any good results unfortunately. So if anyone has any tips or suggestions on how to accomplish this that would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

-IlTallDude

It's similar to Solidworks in many ways, so if you follow a puzzle making tutorial for that, you should be able to figure it out for Autodesk.
Check out Puzzles a la Vi for a start.
Drew's tutorial is also great, and can be found here. Unfortunately, the second video seems to have permanently disappeared.

Feel free to PM me with any questions, I should be able to help!

I believe I have the second part of that video. If anyone wants it, I can upload it somewhere.

Please do! I've been wanting to see that for a while

@Iltalldude: I suggest you get solidworks not Autocad, I have both including the student pack, and I used autocad for puzzle design for a year. I though it was great and everything since it allowed me to make the master skewb 2x2, but to be honest, compared to solidworks it's [insert mean comment here].

I started solidworks two months ago and it's amazing. Oh and the TP a la vi video is only good for solidworks, sorry ^^

Greg

The problem with that is Autodesk's student package is free, and Solidworks' is not. So we have to make do with Autodesk's limitations... fortunately, most can be worked around!

Why is it only good for Solidworks? The concepts are the same, it's just done differently.

WOW! What a great video! I want Solidworks, but I can't afford it

Money really is the main issue with soildworks vs. autocad. I would like to get solidworks as it seems everyone else here uses it, however I don't have the money currently. Since autocad is free I figured I'd use that.

Steve, thanks for the tutorials, but unfortunately they are all solid works and don't really apply to autocad.

Also I cant seem to figure out how to make a "rotated plane" (I think that's what its called) for splitting the pieces. is this just not possible in autocad?

Yes they do! I use Autodesk, and those tutorials helped quite a lot. The method is the same, you just have to do things slightly differently.

To make a plane, use the rotate sketch command, and click on the hollow box button on the bottom. The default is the solid box, which is used to create a solid.

Unfortunately, you will have to split each solid seperately, which is autodesk's weakest spot, so try to only keep the parts that are important to see if the mechanism will work or not, or even just one of each piece.