Free Software Tools for Mechanical Engineers

The world is changing.

The garage tinkerer-become-entrepreneur of yesteryear is now a .COM entrepreneur. The men who once spurred economic domination of the western world are now writing lines of code. No longer do you need a factory to build wealth - and so our economy which was once based on manufacturing is now on the decline.

Those who once had a variety of carpentry tools, metal workshops in their basement are now turning to 3D CAD, CAM, rapid prototyping and the internet.

You are now sitting in front of the tinkerer's new workshop. You just didn't know it.


So I'm transitioning in my career, and what will I be doing to fill the time between different cubicles? You'd probably guess I'd be crossing off those bucket list items -- trekking in the Himalayas, ski bum at Tahoe, putting in two killer workouts daily in hopes of pulling off a 10 hour Ironman??

No - I've decided to sharpen my Engineering skills! (and perhaps invent a thing or two-- but that's all I'm telling you). I have certainly been neglecting plenty of things over the past 8 years at my current job as a medical device engineer, but mechanical engineering is a big field, and I have been inspired to become more competitive. Since I expect to have some free time during my job search, I'm going to be honing my skills, digging in books, reviewing old texts, and best of all, trying new things.

One problem. Generally doing many types of engineering from home mandates those expensive software programs available to you by default by working at Corporation XYZ. After all, I'm not going to WRITE software to assist the design of my gift to the world, right?

Fortunately, I'm a problem solver and the best tool any engineer can have is resourcefulness. After scanning the web, I've learned that there is plenty of free alternatives to the tools I've been using.

Here is a list of what I've found so far. I very much hope to make this an easy access point for other engineers, designers, and creators to find tools to solve their dilemmas.

This post will be under construction for quite some time, I imagine.


CAD
The heart of Mechanical design, but we're long past the days of AutoCad 14 and MS Paint. Solidworks is quickly becoming the market leader, followed by the likes of Pro/E and Autodesk's Inventor.

FreeCad - The best completely free 3D Parametric CAD software on the net.

Alibre - Low cost, professional grade. The first release of this software was heralded as "XCAD", and free liscenses were given out to the public. Nowadays, a 3D CAD package very competitive to Solidworks and Inventor is now available to you for $99.

AutoDesk Alias

Numerical Analysis & Modeling.
Matlab is the hands down king of numerical modeling in industry, but again, not cheap.

As always,
Wikipedia is frequently a good place to start.

SciLab is free, has many of the same features.

GNU Octave - numerical analysis program with syntax very similar to Matlab. I've noticed that Wikipedia entries on mathematic topics are beginning to crop up with Octave code included. Exciting!

Imaging

Image J Developed by the NIH, this is great for analyzing Xray photos, but It's also useful for doing just about any analysis of greyscale. Simple and intuitive.

Gimp Photoshops's free cousin. Tons of power and easy to learn as tutorials are showing up EVERYWHERE online.

Blender - 3D graphics modeling and rendering. I haven't used software like this yet, but it appears to be very powerful.

Office Software

A free version of computing tools very similar to Microsoft Office.


Gliffy does what Visio does, but for free, and it doesn't take up any space on your computer.

Way more tools, with much wider scope than engineering.

Another good place to poke around.


What free tools have you found? I'll add anything you as a Mechanical engineer or Product designer/Developer see as useful to what you do.

(as a sidenote, my home computer is an Apple. Many programs of the programs I list will be compatible with multiple OSs)

Guest post.

A good friend of mine, Matt Mortensen, a both a fantastic chemist and photographer, has asked me to guest post on his photo blog.

You can find it here.

http://doctormortensen.blogspot.com/2010/05/guest-post-iceland.html

The Sweetest Thing

One thing that's happened in my absence here is that I became an uncle. Here's a photo of my niece Julia in her 8th month.



This was taken while shooting some photos for her & her parent's christmas card.

Performance.

If you haven't seen this yet, here it is. This guy is my new idol.

The Good news is....

Good News: EK and I have spent 3 fun weekends in a row out of town, Much of it time for just the two of us.

Good News: My grandfather is feeling well and gaining weight after a few rounds of radiation treatments

Good News: My car is at 165000 miles and working great.

Good News: I just ran 18 miles on a relatively hot, humid day. Despite hitting a hard wall, I finished. Finishing 26.2 feels within reach.

Good News: I continue to discover great people around me.

Good News: I got to see my parents and niece yesterday. My niece is growing so fast.

Good News: 6 months for EK and I passed on Friday. We had homemade Pizza and super good chocolate.

Ancestors

So there have been some emails flying around amongst my extended family in the run-up to the the family reunion, and some very interesting information about ancient lineage was shared, courtesy of the genealogists.

In fact, 4 different Norwegian lineages were shared, but my direct bloodline was dated back 13 generations.

That's right. I now know the name of my

1. Great
2. Great
3. Great
4. Great
5. Great
6. Great
7. Great
8. Great
9. Great
10. Great Grandfather.

Ready? Drumroll........

Ole Olsson Skjåstad, born in 1585. Yeah, not quite so glamourous that he's literally Ole, Ole's son.
and Skjåstad is literally his address. It was later changed when my Great Great Grandfather, Ole Ivar, moved to a more auspicious location down the fjord ;)

Perhaps even more interesting is the conversations my uncle had (some time ago) with some Norwegian relatives who seem to think/have some shaky research that we are descended from some early Viking chieftains from Denmark, and quite possibly,

Haraldr Blátönn.

You've probably never heard of him, but he's a pretty significant historic figure for a few reasons:

1) Harald is regarded as having united (if temporarily) Denmark, Norway, and Sweden under a single king
2) He's responsible for the Jelling Stones, claiming to have brought christianity to Denmark, and is mentioned in the Icelandic Saga Heimskringla, which I suppose is now going to go on the reading list.
3) Bluetooth technology is named after him.

Its pretty cool to have that reminder right on my desktop.




Now. Given my family's dental history, I'm going to go brush my teeth.

Up Nort at da Laake.

I had a great weekend in Northern MN at a cabin owned by my Grandfather's cousin's family. My grandfather and his cousin(who just passed last fall) were close, so my father, aunts & uncles, and their cousins spent many summers at this same place. I had been here before, but only as a toddler.

A reunion brought about 40 people together in this small cabin, although today, there are 4 other cabins owned by relatives on the same lake. It felt very strange to see adults who I have vague memories as a child show up as Grandparents, other kids instantly grown up -- and meeting their families and children.

One unfortunate thing is that this was only a weekend for EK and I, and most of the conversations ended up feeling like speed dating rather than wholesome conversations with people whom you share a great deal of DNA. I also, in this melee, missed talking with a few couple people I really have some great adoration for. Fortunately, they live fairly close. (Strange how that can still be a world away)

Anyways, dinner was served on Saturday evening by my Grandfather's cousin's wife -- who managed to cook for the group and still have energy to have lively conversation (one of the few wholesome conversations had) and play with the young (great-grand) kids. Not bad for 94 years old. It's something I genuinely hope for my life.

After everyone retired to their respective cabins, EK and I had the treat of sleeping in THE cabin. Small & spartan, but with 60 years of memories & tradition.

But before that, we walked out to the dock, laid down, made funny faces at each other, curled up, and watched the stars come out.


This is what is important.





This morning was another fantastic meal: mind blowing caramel rolls, quiche, egg bake, fresh fruit, and of course, coffee.

And then we drove home.