FOSS CAD and 3D Modeling Software? 413
Paul server guy writes "I work at a privately funded, open source, manned, return to the moon mission — Yes really, and Yes, we really are going to put man (and woman) back on the moon. Since we are open source, we want all of our tools to be, too. What we are looking for is CAD software that we can feed into Blender (or the like) to do 3D modeling with. Many of the engineers have tried working with Blender and Art of Illusion, but have not been pleased. They want to just draw the parts, then feed them to the art people who will run them through the 3D modelers for videos, illustrations and such. What is your preference?"
You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:4, Funny)
-Right. Now, uh, item four: attainment of world supremacy within the next five years. Uh, Francis, you've been doing some work on this.
-Yeah. Thank you, Reg. Well, quite frankly, siblings, I think five years is optimistic, unless we can smash the Roman empire within the next twelve months.
rj
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Informative)
Ya know, it seems to be a common occurrence to find space projects with horrid web sites. Consider:
http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/ [copenhagen...bitals.com]
http://www.interorbital.com/ [interorbital.com]
Both real groups doing real hardware right now, with websites that look like scams.
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, there is very little evidence that Interorbital has produced any real hardware in the past few years. Plenty of models and drawings, but no actual hardware (let alone flight tests).
(Posted AC because I'm in the industry, and Interorbital has made themselves a pain in the past for people who say this sort of thing about them. But don't take my AC word for it: go try to find evidence they've built or flown something. If they have, there should be plenty of info, right?)
If you want real web sites, check out people like Armadillo [armadilloaerospace.com], XCOR [xcor.com], Masten [masten-space.com], or Unreasonable [blogspot.com], for example.
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Funny)
Hi Charles, how ya doin'? :)
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Funny)
Or is the a scheme to get money out of stupid geeks by driving traffic to your website?
Drive geeks to their website? Everyone knows /. readers don't RTFA.
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Funny)
You know, that's a bizarre occurance. Slashdot takes down sites so much the name has become a verb. Yet, nobody reads the article before posting. How do so many geeks manage that? I mean, I post my knee-jerk reactions to a site, but at least I have the courtesy to not cost them bandwidth.
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Insightful)
"Those who post seldom read, those who read seldom post."
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They've got plenty of traffic now. Rather more than they can handle, it seems. If they can't build a web server that scales up, what makes them think they can build a spaceship?
Offtopic, but it needs to be asked any time somebody has a scheme like this: what's your business model? Because the big problem with space travel is that there's never been one. Yeah, yeah, if Congress hadn't cut off the tap, blah, blah, blah. The fact is that space travel is going to have to start paying for itself eventually. Othe
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Hey, be fair. There's something to be said for goofy hobby projects-- like the people who spend thousands of dollars building pumpkin launchers, for example. If that's the spirit in which this all is intended, then hell-- why not? "Building a rocket" just becomes an event to hang around with goofy people and drink beer.
That said, the poster of this story seems to serious for that, and their website is completely busted.
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Insightful)
"This female surgeon can't even cook bacon and eggs, what makes the bitch think she can take out my kidney?
"This dork can't even find himself a single woman to have sex with him, what makes him think he can write software that will attract millions of users?"
You see, it is possible to be highly competent at one thing and be not very competent in another. Even if they have the loose relationship of being two things that geeks tend to think are pretty cool, such as Engineering Spaceships and developing web sites and maintaining a web server.
Obviously I have not been able to view the web page due to it being slashdotted, but it is a good possibility that they didn't put much thought or effort into it. They probably thought "Hey, why don't we just cobble together a small web presence in case anyone wants to donate any money or otherwise contribute to our project. Let's not spend much time on it though as our aim is space travel, not web development.
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:4, Interesting)
"This female surgeon can't even cook bacon and eggs, what makes the bitch think she can take out my kidney?"
Kind of like an engineer that can't even use blender! seriously I've used blender and even liked it. but the UI is an art in itself, the learning curve is very steep and the skills learned fall off rapidly if you don't use it regularly.
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Blender isn't CAD software. No matter how great the interface would be, its just not the right for the job of modeling parts that should end up as real hardware.
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Insightful)
The following I learnt the harsh way:
Image sells.
Present a nice image for your company, people will think better of you than a company which just slaps some crap together. Doesn't matter if the company with a crap website produces better product, image is important in getting the attention necessary for whatever goals you seek. It's the same reason why the geeks who get all the success are the ones who have learnt that social skills are more important than technical know-how.
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've managed to get on the web site now. It isn't a whiz-bang web site with all sorts of awesome web features, but it does the job. Their content is a little slim but I assume this project is in the early stages. It appears that they have partnered with in some way with the University of Western Ontario (Enrollment: 30,000+) and the Oakland Univeristy (Enrollment: 20,000+). Now we aren't talking Harvard here but we aren't talking University of Phoenix, either.
Yes, The project is new. We are at the stage where we are looking for volunteers to help.
And, just so you (well, all of the rest of you) know, Western has one of the best Planetary Sciences departments in Canada, and are the first node outside of the US in NASA's Lunar Research Network. (Here I go, Killing another page. - http://clrn.uwo.ca/ [clrn.uwo.ca]) We also work with University of North Dakota, who have a great deal of space experience.
Their business partners.....I don't know about them. I tried to go to one web site and got the firefox "Get me the hell out of here, this page got jacked" message.
I'd like to know which one. We'll fix that.
It should also be noted that their Web Master is currently operating out of the Sahara Desert. I'm guessing this site is new and she hasn't had much time to work on it. Not to mention, hey! If I'm donate money to a project that is supposed to sent people to space, I'd sure as hell rather them use the money to you know, send people to space rather than make their web site look all pretty with tons of Flash animation and the like.
Well, thank you. We also need volun
Business model (Score:4, Interesting)
If a company can bring 200 kilos of moon rocks back from the moon, a mission could pay for itself from sale of the rocks. Easily $2000 a gram, perhaps more if some more interesting specimens could be searched out and returned.
If one could do a shot similar to Apollo, but unmanned, several metric tons could be returned, and be quite profitable.
Ask yourself how much a kilogram of martian soil would sell for, too.
Re:Business model (Score:4, Interesting)
The cost of the Apollo space program is commonly given as $25 billion. When adjusted to 2005 dollars this would approximate to $135 billion.
200.000g * $2000 = $400 million. Granted, there was a bunch of first-time research and pesky human requirements to take care of back then, so presumably an unmanned rock-collector should be cheaper. Wonder what the cost per mission would be, how many trips they would have to do before breaking even, and if they would have affected the price of moon-rocks enough to affect their revenue by then...
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According to the last story on the space cannon [slashdot.org], the cheapest current cost to orbit was 11,000 dollar pr kg.
The Apollo lunar module [wikipedia.org] weighed 14,696 kg. That's 161,656,000 dollars just to get the damn thing into an orbit. A moon shot will be significantly more expensive.
And that's just the fuel costs. This doesn't include anything else. 161 million dollars to lift a lunar lander module into low earth orbit.
$2,000/gram of moon rock will make a dent into the expenses, but it won't make it profitable.
Re:Business model (Score:5, Informative)
Supply, meet Demand.
Moon rocks are $2000 a gram because they are astonishly rare, something you'll happily be taking care of for us.
Your income isn't the price now, it's the area under the curve of the price as your 200 kilograms of rock drives the price down.
Re:Business model (Score:5, Funny)
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Fly indiana jones and have him leave a bag of peebles when taking the rocks.
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Fly indiana jones and have him leave a bag of peebles when taking the rocks.
Harrison Ford probably wouldn't be interested in the venture at this point in his life. Also, I doubt that Mario Van Peebles [imdb.com] could be convinced to part with such a personal item.
Re:Obligatory... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, Wishing I hadn't posted the website at all, I'm just looking for some software to let the Engineers share data with the Artists, Not stir up this hornets nest.
Re:Obligatory... (Score:4, Informative)
Have you seen the list of Open Engineering Tools over at DevelopSpace (http://wiki.developspace.net/Open_Source_Engineering_Tools)? Not sure if it helps with the immediate need, but it is the most comprehensive list of open source tools for all things engineering I have found.
Re:Obligatory... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, anybody help you find anything yet?
I only know of BRL-CAD that would be suitable for defining geometry that you could actually fabricate (as opposed to geometry for pretty pictures).
http://brlcad.org/ [brlcad.org]
It has hit /. before http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/08/1823248 [slashdot.org]
Re:You've raised $130 out of $7500 (Score:5, Informative)
You'll take note that Artist and Webmaster are #1 and #2 respectively on their "help wanted" list. Perhaps you could volunteer instead of complaining?
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It looks like that campaign was supposed to end last year, on Dec 31st. Why should we waste time answering your questions now, given the seemingly unrealistic goal, when you can't even format a donation box? Or is the a scheme to get money out of stupid geeks by driving traffic to your website?
Instead of spreading rumors you could find out the facts. This a full year campaign to recruit 250 people that has barely started. Nothing unrealistic about that goal. The widget only represents sign-ups for this year completed through the website not total membership. I was in the middle of changing the title on the widget to represent this more clearly when the fur started flying. The stand-alone version of CiviCRM provides a bland sign-up page. We were trying to correct it while our web master was
BRL-CAD (Score:5, Informative)
BRL-CAD is probably the only full fledged package. Link:
http://brlcad.org/ [brlcad.org]
Re:BRL-CAD (Score:4, Insightful)
BRL-CAD is probably just as powerful mathematically but it lacks all of the features from SolidWorks and Pro/E that make them easy to use.
There really is no OSS alternative for professional CAD users. If the BRL-CAD folks would take hints from the commercial CAD market with respect to UI usability, they would find a big uptick in user count.
Re:BRL-CAD (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, you mean it's suffering from Gimp-disease.
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No, they're suffering from this-isn't-goddamned-1972-unix. A cryptic CLI is no match for a well designed UI when it comes to solid modeling.
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Dentists need to grow some balls and use hand tools only.
No Chance. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Since we are open source, we want all of our tools to be, too."
Ideology won't get you to the moon.
Re:No Chance. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Chance. (Score:4, Insightful)
No. The first time it was equal parts arms race, chest-beating nationalism, and 100 billion dollars.
Re:No Chance. (Score:4, Insightful)
with that kind of spin the trip to the moon sounds downright evil.
Compared to fighting it out throughout the developing world (as they both did), the Russian v US race to the moon was anything but evil.
Re:No Chance. (Score:5, Insightful)
The physics just don't hold up your argument, dude.
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News flash: the moon has rocks and dust!!
Bullshit. It's discoid-shaped and made out of cheese.
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Given that the US seemed to win the space race something like 3 - 8, I'd say no. The Russians beat the US to quite a lot of important milestones along the way to the moon. In the early years they were way ahead, and it wasn't until the end the US surpassed them.
Hadn't their ready-to-go manned lunar rocket exploded (destroying the launch-site) 2 weeks before Apollo 11 launched, they could have been first to walk the moon as well. Shame they didn't, as the US probably would have to go to Mars just to declare
Re:No Chance. (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't exactly call the N-1 "ready to go". Its first flight (Feb. 1969) exploded 69 seconds after liftoff; its second flight (the one in July) blew up 23 seconds after liftoff. Even if it had flown successfully in July, it wouldn't have had anyone on it--not even the Soviets were daft enough to put a crew on a rocket that had only flown once before.* And they certainly wouldn't have been doing anything more than an earth-orbit checkout. It would have taken really good luck on the Soviets' part, plus another Apollo 1-level disaster to NASA, to give the Soviets even a slim chance of putting someone on the moon first. And that's being generous. The N-1 never did work right; something about having 30 engines in the first stage just left too many things to go wrong. All four flights ended in explosions.
*Of course, the US did exactly that 12 years later. Actually, they had a crew on the very first space shuttle launch--no step-by-step or unmanned testing with that one.
FreeCAD (Score:5, Informative)
FreeCAD https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page [sourceforge.net] has made huge progress recently.
Re:FreeCAD (Score:5, Informative)
I looked briefly at the FreeCAD, it is impressive for a F/OSS project but I'm afraid it's not good enough yet to even make a plastic case for yer cell phone, let alone a propellant tank. For example:
The OP asked "what free s/w to use to build hardware to fly to the moon." My answer would be: "it doesn't matter, it won't work anyway." If I were to do the whole project, I would be first concerned about financing the whole project; cost of the best software on the market would be a drop in the ocean compared to everything else. People who started the moon project with a predetermined opinion what tools they will use won't get anywhere, not in the rocket science at least.
Re:FreeCAD (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, let me explain. Either you buy an excellent 3D drafting / modeling software, or you spend 1,000x that much on paper analyses done by PhDs and on testing of real parts done at ranges and in test flights. The latter approach was used for Moon rockets - cost was no object. Those guys are welcome to borrow $100B and do the same; or they can borrow $100-200K and buy the best tools that are available today. But using play-do for things that life depends on is, IMO, beyond silly. I'd call it criminal, though as someone else already said they have no chance to even get to the point where they can kill someone with their rockets.
I do mechanical design and simulations, by the way, in SolidWorks/CosmosWorks, in Inventor, and with CoCreate/Nastran tools. Probably more. So I know a thing or two about this.
Re:FreeCAD (Score:4, Interesting)
Just to play the other side, as a mechanical engineer, I've done analysis in Comsol, Ansys, Fluent, and some custom Matlab.
Right now, I've been doing most of my analysis in Elmer (FOSS). If I was doing heavier stuff, I'd probably move to some version of Salome / Meca. These are all professional quality programs, but they're FOSS. The two are not necessarily exclusive. There are a set of libraries (OpenCascade) that has much of the framework needed to build interoperable Solid models, but nothing was out there for quite some time. FreeCAD is the one I keep hearing about, but haven't checked it out for quite some time. As such, I still Solidworks all my stuff.
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Via projects like openluna (which afait is a Uni spin out). So here you have a project, dedicated to bring the work of those PHDs into the public domain and all you can do is bitch about it?
Whats more, they are not just going to lauch some "man and women" on the moon, its a stepped program starting with robotics. This kind of project is the only way I can see of us ev
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Another dumb question : NASA, ESA, and most public research facilities are quite friendly to open source and frequently develop their own (I know NASA provides a fluid mechanics analysis tool for instance). Did you check what they use for CAD ?
Re:FreeCAD (Score:5, Insightful)
Your comment makes me wonder what Armadillo Aerospace could come up with (in software) for their own designs
This is not a new problem, really. What a startup didn't hear such a great idea from a young, enthusiastic engineer? "Boss, don't buy Quickbooks, don't waste $150, I will write the stuff for you for free!" If the boss doesn't know any better, such a proposition is usually a total loss. (Just have a look at QuickBooks for the proof.)
There are at least two issues at work here. First, do you have an expertise? And second, will your resources be better spent on something else, new perhaps, instead of reinventing the wheel?
As major CADs go, a mere $20K for a full SolidWorks seat is peanuts. Most of the labor that goes into the software is spent on interfaces; the rest is in licensed, very specialized libraries that do their job. For example, most 3D CADs use 3rd party math libraries that calculate all the solids and do all the heavy lifting. Simulation is very frequently done with 3rd party tools also, just because it's so hard to do fast. Ansys licenses their solvers to Autodesk, IIRC, as well as sells them independently (Ansys Workbench.) Then you go into the flow modeling (liquid, gas) and thermal modeling (in everything) - those represent yet another unique problem. The equations that describe the model are pretty well known [wikipedia.org]; the real challenge is to simplify the model enough so that the computation ends before you die from old age, and at the same time retains enough accuracy. Meshers are a popular, very complex problem, most FEA tools have several adaptive meshes, and a lot of effort goes into building them.
All that takes an awful amount of time and resources. Armadillo probably doesn't have enough expertise to code most of the hard stuff. Sure they can do GUI, but that's the easy part. They'd need probably a few decades, given their limited workforce, to recreate the existing software, and that would cost them a lot, and they'd be making no progress on the rocket, and they'd be getting no grants for any of that. Unless they want to enter the market of simulation tools, they'd be better off working on their main goals, and paying pocket change for access to missing knowledge and skills (in form of simulation software, or consultants, or whatever.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, both things are something that I wanted to mention but it was too late.
It does make sense for a company to *add* something to the existing package if they think it is a good idea. Modern CADs allow easy addition of 3rd party applications to the system, so that they have access to the models and can do things. There is a good number of 3rd party add-ons [tenlinks.com] for SolidWorks, for example. Your suggestion of refining "one thing" is very valid.
Outside of that, I do not know if Armadillo programmers' gaming e
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Are you fucking kidding me? I work in the industry that tftp describes and believe me... John Carmack is smart, but we are smarter. And we've been studying this stuff for a lot longer.
You really don't understand the enormous complexity, and the enormous progress already made, if you think one clever programmer is going to make any difference whatsoever.
re: FOSS CAD and 3D Modeling Software? (Score:5, Funny)
Shame on you (Score:2, Insightful)
... for planning another moon hoax. We all know they didn't go to the moon but filmed it back in Nevada, and they did it all without any flimsy-schimzy 3d effects.
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Blender Imports Many Formats (Score:2, Informative)
I actually do a lot of work with Blender, and it can import a wide variety of formats. I would be very surprised it the CAD programs you are using don't export to at least ONE of the various formats Blender can accept. If you are using AutoCAD I think you have a good shot of an export to a ,dxf or .dwg are probably your best bets.
gnu moon mission (Score:2, Funny)
Put a Stallman on the moon, Im shure you will get funding
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Yeah, but then they'd never get a woman on the moon!
Human woman, perhaps, but a female wookie....woooooonnnngngngngngng!
Is that so... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yes really, and Yes, we really are going to put man (and woman) back on the moon"
No you're not.
Re:Is that so... (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially not if you're putting additional constraints on your operation such as requiring every tool to be open source. It's hard enough when you're using the best tools.
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Insightful)
While I can't see the linked page, the summary contains no mention of either bringing them back, or having them survive the trip.
That makes it a little easier (though still very expensive).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If the man and women they intend to put on the moon need not to be "living and breathing" (i.e. if they're aiming at "Moon burials") it would save tremendous amounts of payload in Life-Support, plus Landing & Return vehicle.
Actually, now that I think about it, the market for Moon burials could probably lower the barrier to entry for a startup aiming at actually sending living and breathing humans to the Moon and back - how many people out there would be willing to pay, sau $200.000 to be buried on the M
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A million dollars won't buy you a small jet, let alone a damned moon rocket. Think, McFly.
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Hey! Hope springs eternal!!
With any luck, they won't get close enough to a working rocket to actually kill anybody, though-- I think that's about the best you can hope for. Then it would turn tragic. (Right now it's just hilarious. To me, at least.)
art people (Score:2)
Why does it seem to me that if I were planning a trip to the moon, I wouldn't really have 'art people'?
Re:art people (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you're not *really* sending a person to the moon, you're just faking a lunar landing :-)
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I think the theory is to create spectacular-looking images to attract investors. Either that, or they're only faking a moon landing...
BRL-CAD (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sure, it looks like he's plugging his website,
Don't worry. Nobody ever reads the article.
Did anyone grab a snapshot of the site? (Score:2)
Sure you are (Score:2)
You're going to put a man on the moon.
With your organization that doesn't even have a wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] (okay, maybe it will now since I posted the link).
And your server, which you posted to /., can't even handle the /. effect!!
I hope you and the other readers get some interesting suggestions about modelling tools, but I'm sorry, you don't have a remote possibility of making a moon shot.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, I'm gonna feed the Troll on this one...
>But you don't start by landing a manned spaceship on the moon using a development model that's never >effectively been applied to large scale hardware projects.
I thought that was just what Russia and the US did in the 50's and 60's. Granted they had the budgets of their whole countries to wager on it, but that doesn't hold water as an argument either for many reasons. I'll propose one - it may be hard, but not so fantastic to think that a project like this c
HeeksCad (Score:2, Informative)
HeeksCad is making progress. I don't know about feeding your parts into Blender, though. You may be able to shape the project some if you get involved, though. Somebody else mentioned FreeCAD. I've not yet tried to use it.
There's also gcad3d [gcad3d.org]. I found that one to be tough to use, though. For 2D, I don't think that you have many options but qcad.
Huh? Blender? (Score:4, Insightful)
Being able to import CAD files into Blender should be the least of your concerns when choosing a CAD package. There isn't a free CAD package out there that will cope with designing a rocket and lunar lander. Spend your hard earned $130 (plus a lot more) on a high-end CAD package like Catia or Unigraphics.
Or before even that... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're worrying about CAD when they should be worrying about calculations and broad, system-level design. Remember, the first moon missions took place without the use of CAD. Detail designing the parts is a relatively small part of aerospace engineering. A better approach would be to prove their engineering legitimacy by analysis, then impress IBM/Dassault enough to donate a CATIA license to them. Give the rough launch vehicle design, the mission orbit design, the reentry vehicle type, and detailed quantified justifications and tradeoff studies for everything. It should be heavy with physics, and the calculations should be airtight. Expect a 500+ page technical report for this scale of project at this preliminary stage. Any explanatory sketches can be done by hand or any illustration program. You only need CAD when you're (1) ready to machine parts or (2) ready for detailed computational analysis. These guys are jumping the gun.
CAD isn't just about coming up with the part geometry by the way. Modern CAD/PLM involves massive amounts of metadata about materials, dimensions/tolerances (all locked in proprietary file formats), and keeping track of the relationships between parts, sub-assemblies and assemblies. You don't want to manually copy & paste 300 fasteners each time you recalculate stresses on a rocket nozzle, do you? It also automates many tedious design efforts. Want to figure out how to snake twenty miles of wiring, hydraulics and other tubing through a rocket with a hundred thousand parts? Oh also, each type of cable/tubing has a different minimum bend radius because of material stresses. Arc it too tightly and it cracks open during the launch vibrations, after having fatigued due to ambient thermal variations. And these are just a couple mechanical aspects of such a sprawling project that CAD must handle. You could "draw" the parts of just about any modern machine (fighter jet, car, bicycle) with an old copy of Maya used for the CGI in Jurassic Park. It'd be useless for analysis though because of the low numerical precision, and impossible for engineering because they have the most primitive handling of parametric modeling, and crude ability to work with multi-component (thousands) geometry.
Any teenager can come up with some gee-whiz 3d animation (that Mars lander animation from years ago was done by one). Could any teenager get funding for a mission to the moon? Work on your numbers first, then worry about software, you IT geeks you.
BRL-CAD (Score:4, Informative)
A Couple of others have already mentioned it, but take a look at BRL-CAD. [brlcad.org]
It's pretty much the standard. It originated as a US Government backed project and was later open sourced. This is a VERY mature piece of software, unfortunately with a steep learning curve.
Red
some earlier discussions (Score:4, Informative)
In addition to the comments here, you might find useful suggestions in this 2005 [slashdot.org] and this 2003 [slashdot.org] Slashdot discussion.
Find A Mirror! (Score:2)
Got your priorities straight I see. (Score:2)
lol (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this a joke? Your team page [74.125.155.132] shows you have at most four engineers, who are mostly IT geeks, not experts in propulsion, aerospace structures or astrodynamics, with the possible exception of Dr Snyder. You have a fricken artist before having a real engineering team, or anything solid to promote. You guys make Armadillo Aerospace [armadilloaerospace.com] look like Lockheed Martin. At least SpaceX etc. while lacking other things, started with something (usually money), you guys don't have anything. Quit wasting your time.
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Actually, we have a large number more than that. That page is just the team leaders. Stop wining and come help.
Bwhahahaha - "engineers" drawing pretty parts (Score:5, Insightful)
oh man, what a load - if you had real engineers working on actual moon project you'd be more worried about nonlinear FEA software at this point. There's a reason why the USA is the only nation to ever had put humans on the moon - it's way too complex, way too expensive, and requires way too many PhD level man-decade equivalents of effort.
Several problems (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't work, and I speak from experience. I have done work for the CSA (Canadian Space Agency) doing similar things and what you are looking for doesn't exist on all sorts of levels.
First, engineering software is a very specialized beast in exactly the wrong way to exist as a FOSS project. For FOSS projects to exist you first need someone who is capable of doing the programing. Then they have to have a need that they want to fulfill. And they can't need it urgently enough that simply going out any buying a working package makes sense. None of this describes the type of people who are trying to design next-generation parts of anything.
It comes down to this: if you have the funding to actually make anything that you plan on designing you have the funding that paying for a high quality industry standard package is peanuts. And if you don't have the funding then it doesn't matter, does it?
It's the same reason that film and television production has always been happy to pick up FOSS solutions that already work but have never particularly cared about developing them. If you are operating at the professional level where you need these tools the cost of them is almost meaningless. It something that always confuses GIMP and Blender supporters who view it as personal software. For them shelling out $5000 a pop for software is such a big deal and they can never understand how the pros don't seem to care.
If you are seriously attempting to design aerospace hardware then you have moved into the realm where these types of software costs are basically meaningless. Suck it up and act like it. If, however, you are actually trying to become a proof-of-concept for FOSS in engineering work then I wish you the best of luck. However, those are two different goals and likely not compatible.
However, beyond the FOSS issue what you are trying to do will not work. Period. These types of software packages are very specialized for specific types of work and beyond a basic level are no good beyond that. 3D modeling software such as Blender or AoI (or Maya or Lightwave or 3DS Max...) are not CAD software. They are not even remotely CAD software. Yes, they appear superficially similar but they are NOT. 3D modeling software is intended to fake the appearance of large numbers of real objects. CAD software is intended to do what is basically visual math. 3D modeling packages have margins of error built in. Many of them will auto-round any equations or numbers entered. As such they are not suitable for real-world design of any complexity.
The types of data that CAD and modeling software generate are also not particularly similar. If you try and just toss engineering blueprints into animation software your artists will not thank you are the end result will look like ass. CAD tends to have too much and the wrong type of detail where animation software is looking for simplification and tends to simplify areas that need detail to look proper once animated. It takes almost more work to clean up a CAD model for animation that it takes to create one from scratch.
You can't really even send a CAD design right to a 3D printer without a significant amount of clean-up unless it was designed with that in mind.
So, to summarize, decide what you want each section of your operation to do and shell out the cash for whatever it takes to let them do it properly. Let everyone worry about their own needs and don't try and meddle by forcing the internal needs of other departments on them. If you were seriously planning on saving costs by not buying professional software for an AEROSPACE project then you are already fucked. You may as well blow all the investor's money on a massive party because it's lost anyways.
The most serious post yet (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent has given you the answer you don't want, but it is nonetheless the correct one. There are several intellicad based products which are fairly mature (BricsCAD, for example) which are also interoperable with commercial software to an extent. Still, they're even more limited than the commercial products - both in capability and in productivity.
It's been 10 years since I was in aerospace (NASA and Orbital Sciences, FWIW), but the big push at the time was Pro/Engineer. They were, back in the late 90s, where AutoCAD is today. The learning curve was difficult and the software expensive - but it was damned impressive, and it got the job done on several complex geometry products.
It sounds like you're not going to the moon, but rather are exploring funding options and sources for a startup who's ultimate goal is intended to be a moon landing. If you were going to the moon, I would suggest you start looking at FEM and CFD modeling software for the structures (my area of expertise), and the myriad custom software bits for each of the critical components. I believe NASTRAN is open source, though I'm not aware of a GUI front end (which you will dearly want). FLAGRO (Also a NASA project) should be open source for fracture mechanics analysis, but it was really in its infancy when I left NASA.
This will sound funny, but you might want to go check with the amateur rocket guys to see what they're using. RockSIM is the gold standard for 6DOF simulations for rockets traveling up to the edge of space, if you're on a budget, but it's not open source. There is an OSS project very similar to RockSIM - I think it's called RASaero.
There has been a lot of money invested in creating tools for much of what you want to do - you'll be better served in the long run to leverage the closed source options, focusing on keeping _your_ IP free for anyone to use - if that's your intent. You can always give away your CADD - and most packages have output/converters to fully defined - of not OSS - formats.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And while Linux started out that way, it didn't end up that way at all. There are many, many counterexamples to your assertion.
If your privately funded aerospace project is to have any credibility at all it must be seen visibly moving towards its goal. You can't afford to be sidelined for a decade while your FOSS engineering software plays catch-up.
If I were an astronaut... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd be quite scared to be launched on the Moon by a company that asked suggestions about the tools to use on Slashdot!
G'luck with that (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a free CAD package that seems to be just the right caliber for your organization...Google SketchUp.
Use the best tools, regardless of license (Score:4, Informative)
If I were riding a spacecraft to the moon (or riding any vehicle that could easily kill me), I'd want it designed with the best tools for getting the job done. If that's a closed source tool, buy the closed source tool.
Slow and steady (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is my advice: plan a slow-and-steady strategy, rather than a "space race" strategy. Plan for effectiveness over the long haul, rather than short-term results.
That means you will be doing things rather differently than Apollo.
For software, as far as I can tell, nothing exists that will meet your needs. Thus your first step is to figure out what free software has a hope of someday meeting your needs, then figure out how to get developers to work on it until it does meet your needs. So, actually, your very first step is to find an expert in rocket design who can tell you what features you need, what software exists that can do what you need (even if you don't want to use it because it is proprietary). If you are very very lucky, you might find a retired aerospace project manager who will give you advice for free. (I don't think this is far-fetched. Anyone who worked on rockets in the glory days will be old enough to be retired now, and you might find someone who shares your dream and will give advice for free.)
For simulations and engineering computations, you should look at SciPy [scipy.org]. As I said above, it probably doesn't meet your needs now, but it has a solid foundation and lots of people working on it.
As far as a strategy for going to the moon, I don't claim to be an expert, but here is my advice.
You really, really do not want to try to re-create the Saturn V rocket. In fact, you don't want any design where you use up one rocket per moon trip. The slow-and-steady plan goes like this: First you get a "space pickup truck", some sort of launch vehicle that can reliably go to Earth orbit with a small payload (say, 1000 KG or so). Second, using many "space pickup" flights, you build a space station, and stock it with lots of oxygen, food, fuel, etc. Third, you build a "moon shuttle" in orbit, a vehicle that will never land on Earth and never land on the moon, but will safely travel between the fuel. Fourth, you build your "moon lander", which will be carried by the moon shuttle. Finally, you fuel up the moon shuttle and lander, and send a mission to the moon.
At that point, you have the infrastructure to visit the moon as often as you find convenient. You ferry up some more fuel, oxygen, and supplies, refuel the moon shuttle and lander, and off you go.
I'll point out that there are plenty of small companies trying to build a "space pickup truck" right now. You could sensibly just plan on hiring one of those, rather than trying to build your own launch vehicle. You won't get this project done tomorrow anyway, so you might as well start designing your space station and moon-specific hardware now, and just assume you can hire the orbital transport by the time you need it.
If someone gets a "space cannon" operational in time for you, so much the better. Use the cannon to send up lots of fuel and oxygen and such as cheaply as possible. In this case, you will want to build a "space tug" vehicle that can scoot around and collect the canisters shot up by the cannon.
The USA sent men to the moon using a cost-is-no-object, win-the-race strategy. You will do much better to incrementally build the infrastructure to go to the moon conveniently.
Good luck with your grand dream.
steveha
Are you insane? (Score:4, Interesting)
I lived with Windows my entire life until I left college, and embraced the FOSS community. Taught myself Linux. Taught myself a lot of things over the years.
I honestly would bleed for the concept of FOSS. To me, it's like handing the first man to own a model T his own torque wrench- totally freeing him to do something
he's never done before, with something he'll be experiencing for the first time.
But I'm sorry, FOSS CAD & Parametric CAD is total crap now, both from a usability and functionality standpoint. It's the one area that FOSS, I feel,
will never fill well. Why? 2 simple reasons:
1. User Interface- FOSS community, are you listening? Stop with all the damn menus. Learn how to make a decent GUI layer for some aspects of your
program. Even engineers are human- they need something to not only be easy to learn, but INTUITIVE. I'm not sugguesting it look like Fischer Price designed the
layout- just speak with a symbologist/iconographer. Seriously. Ask what your users do, and create usable icons and common actions.
Get over all your sanctimonious insistence on coding a program for numeric and input style- make even a single program with a decent GUI interface. Don't think I'm
calling out Linux people specifically- I use Autodesk Inventor 2010. Yes, legally. I learn it at a community college, and the new version is guilty of that too- older versions
had a more intuitive GUI. The new version takes a LOT of getting used to.
2. GOOD 3D support and rendering-
With all I've seen the FOSS community capable of in graphic rendering (blender, gimp, etc.), why do we lag so far behind in 3D processing? Gaming support famously
suffers massively, and along with it, decent parametric modeling in real time. I have yet to find any native FOSS CAD program, for any OS, that actually renders in 3D
well, or mostly, at all. This is something harder to fix. If the FOSS community could pool their resources to one massive program, like Shuttleworth did for Ubuntu, we
might have a chance. It's a Herculean task, and one I've seen FOSS struggle with for years.
I use Inventor now because it works (with a TERRIBLE interface in 2010), but in 3D mode, extrusion modeling/building makes part design like sculpting clay, one I understand
the commands. It's another ballgame entirely. I *WISH* I could do that with a FOSS program- bad GUI or no!
Inventor also has full kinematic modeling, for testing motion of interacting parts, and integrated stress analysis. Considering NASTRAN is coded in FORTRAN, if I remember
right, even stress analysis software is pretty proprietary, and noone has updated that on a massive scale since the 1960s! We're talking software initially developed for NASA,
and hasn't been re-coded in almost 50 YEARS. Fifty. If NASA can't fund it, who the hell can? (insert jokes about Richard Branson here)
3D CAD and such specialized software in FOSS has a long way to go. I hope I'm wrong. I have yet to see even one that was usable for extrusion style modeling, which almost
anyone can pick up easily once they know how to navigate the interface. Last FOSS CAD program I tried was Q-CAD- among many others like it, did no 3D, no extrusions,
and was a very poor UI. Did 2D well, but it, and many other small CAD programs in native Linux did the same thing. Hell, the only FOSS CAD I've ever seen that COULD do 3D
was by EmachineShop.com, and for free software, the rendering was decent- but the GUI is overly simple, only icons, very limited in modeling scope, and constantly had issues
with basic lines joining together.
I'm sure flames await me- as I am a basic, and probably average Linux user with almost no coding skills, but I have much experience hands-on with this style of software in /. daily, for 10 years, and has tried every program I could find in this area, I hope I'm wrong. I really do.
Windows AND Linux. And you know what, for a guy like me that reads
I hope I've only scratched the surface- but everything I've seen till now pales in comparison to Inventor. And with a UI as bad as it, that's pretty bad.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
no probably Carl Bass [autodesk.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
One of the largest benefits of working in a software like NX for example is being able to move ideas from the Design to Engineering to Manufacturing phases all in one software package.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Do you really have to ask this question, isn't it obvious?
He answered already: they want to put a man on a moon and a woman.
It's a ploy for the man to get the woman. Obviously he figured that the only way to do so is to get her to the moon and basically eliminate the entire world from competing.
Also, he probably will limit her life support supplies, such as air, and she will only find out about it there and will be forced to beg him for this stuff. You'd think under the circumstances he is bound to get her finally.
Re: (Score:2)
Why is the parent moded funny? It's a very very reasonable approach. It really is informative well, and maybe insightful.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are several CAD apps out there. It will eventually come down to trying them and personal preference.
Personal preference, huh? Interesting that you leave out the "Correct enough to design a piece of vehicular hardware that doesn't fucking explode halfway out of Earth's atmosphere" criterion. The idea of using software which is untested and unvetted for this purpose borders on criminal.