The Stirling Engine.

The Stirling Engine is a concept the heat cycle of which we all rely on daily and yet as a technology the Stirling Engine has never been able to take its place alongside our more favoured ‘gas guzzlers’, so it is appropriate that it be used here as an example of AutoCAD R13’s contribution to the progress of PC based modelling.

I have said in the previous ‘Tape Dispenser’ image that AutoCAD R13 was maligned unjustifiably and have taken this comment farther in other papers to be found in the gallery.  Suffice to say here that the model engine you are looking at in this image was the very first drawing I did in a pre-release AutoCAD Release 13, and I was well please with the step forward with one notable and , for some, damaging effect.  Autodesk in their ‘wisdom’ had removed the ‘solprof’ command.  It was a foolish step and showed just how little research Autodesk does to determine who and how many users were already using the 3D functions we had got in R11 and R12. I know some of the reasons behind and for this error and the same problems exist in Autodesk today.

The Model itself was very easy to construct right down to each ball of the bearings.  With R13 came a shift in modelling engine, (not the first or the last), one great step forward was being able to use ‘OSNAP’ directly on the model without additional ‘dummy’ 2D geometry being necessary as had been the case in R11 & R12.  From these models orthographic views could be taken**, sectional views created and assembly and exploded views could quite quickly be generated.

AutoCAD, with Release 13 became a genuine modeller, not every one will agree, but it did and the only reason many missed it was due to other problems in R13 that completely overshadowed its advances and Autodesk in the main and it’s dealers are entirely responsible for missing the greatest opportunity a marketeer could ever had wished for.

The 3D image as seen here cannot be replicated in Inventor, so much for development, and to make matters worse you cannot transfer this model into Inventor.  This shows one area of consistency that we have come to expect from Autodesk, file transfers do not happen.  The Autosolid files did not transfer to AutoCAD, R11 and R12 AME models would not transfer to R13, Mechanical Desktop files do not transfer to Inventor, etc.

The spectre of working with 3D was shaping up, not just to be functionality and FLEXIBILITY, but an inability to upgrade data generated to a latter version of modeller.  To sceptical users this is enough reason to stand off and to many of us it remains a pain in the butt and a great obstacle to ‘going forward’!
 

R. Paul Waddington
cadWest.

P.S.

** ‘Solprof’ came back after much yelling and is still very handy for many tasks. Take note Autodesk, there was a lot to be learned at this point in time but instead their still blaming R13 and making the same mistakes…….go figure!