So I’ve been on the hunt for a free CAD to use and after a lot of digging I found that I wanted to use the Inventor cad. After I got the educational access plan I found that there are a variety of Inventor cads, such as Inventor professional and Inventor CAM and a lot more. Which one would be the best to use?
Inventor Professional is the one you need to download. Inventor CAM and Inventor nesting are add ons to inventor Professional that allow you to do many different things mostly revolving around CNC machining, but if you just want to cad out a robot your needed tool is Inventor professional.
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General heads-up warning. Inventor is a large download, and if you can I would consider using a wired connection to download it.
If you have educational access to Autodesk and have free time you could also look at other autodesk products with your subscription.
Lastly, once you do start CADing out your robot, especially when using Inventor, stay organized. If you ever plan on letting other people work with you, make sure you organize your CAD with folders and subfolders. Personally, I create a folder for each robot and save-as parts into the folder from an organized parts folder, and each robot’s subassembly has its own folder. This way, the CAD is more modular and its easier to track down where parts have broken. If you do this before you start putting parts together in CAD, you are much less likely to run into any dependency errors (where the program cannot find the parts you are using because you moved it/put it into a subfolder).
Good luck with your CAD and don’t hesitate to reach out if you need any help!
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