There are various software's that are available to do 3d modeling.

I will tell
you some of the differences between the different types of software. The two
basic types are parametric modelers and direct modelers. In parametric modeling,
there can be parameters that depend on other parameters, if one is changed the
other one changes automatically, an example is a hub and a shaft, if the
shaft time it has changed the hub diameter will automatically change,
depending on the fit between the hub and the shaft. To do this history is
maintained, now for engineering applications that is very good, but
sometimes designers would like to change one aspect without affecting anything
else. So designers tend to prefer a direct modeling capability. As a beginner
it would be good to learn a direct modeling software first. I'm going to do
some demos using a direct modeling software called Rhino, produced by Robert
McNeel and associates. This software has a 90 day trial version you can download
it from the company website at rhino3d.com. I'm using version 6 on a Windows
computer, so if you are using a Mac please translate my actions to those
appropriate for a Mac. You can use any direct modeling software that you have
access to. You do not need to use Rhino only.
When you first click on the Rhino icon you will see a view like this. Now let's
start using it, go to file and click new, it'll ask you what template you need. I
will choose the large objects in millimeters and click open. Once in Rhin,o
you basically see the same view that you had before, except that down here, I'll
move my cursor down here, it says millimeters. That's basically the
template that it shows. Pay attention to the units as your object will correspond
to whatever size as you draw in the units you chose. You have four viewports,
and the top, front, right, and perspective. The top, front, and right, are
orthographic
projections. To make any viewport active you can click anywhere on the viewport.
So right now my cursor is on the top viewport, as you can see here. I'm gonna
click and it makes that particular viewport active. the way you know that is by
looking at the background or where it says top, font or right. I'm gonna click
here,
and it says right is active now, and click here, and perspective is active. At
the top you see a command line, this is a way for you to communicate with the
software, you can type your input here, or if you did ask the software to do
something, it could not the software will tell you right here that it cannot be
done or what it did. I typed type and it says unknown command, so pay attention to
this particular line quite often, you should be looking at this line every
time you do something or if nothing happens.
The exact coordinates of your mouse pointer are down here. You can see the X,Y
and Z coordinates. Each viewport has a grid, as you can see here, if you want to
be exactly on one of the grid points, make sure you toggle on this thing
called grid snap, once grid snap is on wherever your pointer is,
it's gotta be always go to a grid point.
The way you know where the grid snap is on or not he is when the grid snap
words are in bold. You can select any one of the menus, from top, side or middle
right here. Let me show you some of the options that you have on this side menu
over here. You have lines, that's one of them and just on the right side of that
lines icon, you see a small arrow, and if you click on that, it opens up another
menu, and it gives you different options polyline, line from midpoint, and so on.
And let's see the curves and you have different types of curves, the
interpolate points curve, handle curves, sketch and so on. And let's go to the
solid primitives, that give the opens up a box,
cylinder, sphere, sphere giving diameter, ellipsoid, paraboloid, cone
truncated cone, pyramid, truncated pyramid, tube, torus, pipe and so on. You'll be
using some of these, in some of the other demos that you that I'm gonna show you.
Let me show how to draw something to exact dimensions. I'm gonna go to lines,
polyline, and pay attention to the command line, it says start a polyline.
The software is asking where I want to start this polyline, I can give this
information in two ways, I can click my mouse where I want to start or it can
give exact coordinates. Now let me click on a certain point. You'll see that when
I move my mouse, you can see the coordinates that are changing, and you
can see decimals there, but if you want exactly to be on a grid point, have grid
snap on, and now you'll see that X is -10, -9 and so on, there's no decimals.
And if you want to undo the point that you clicked, you made a mistake, you can
use Ctrl + Z , that will undo the last action. If you want to go out of a
viewport, your viewport is too small, you can use the Shift + right mouse and then
drag the mouse, and you can move your viewport around. If you want to zoom in
and out of your viewport use the Ctrl + right mouse button and move your mouse,
and you can zoom in and out of that particular viewport.
Ok, let me switch off or switch on the grid snap, now I'm going to be only at a
grid point, so let me click on one of the grid points, or anywhere if you have
anywhere close to a grid point it's gonna snap on to the closest grid point.
So let me click over here. And for the next point I can again do a mouse click,
you can see it's asking me for the next point of polyline. I can do a
mouse click, but let me give the exact coordinates, I can input the coordinates
based on the red and green lines that I have, that's the X and Y axis, so I'm
gonna give 10,10 that's the X coordinate is 10, Y is 10. I hit enter,
you can see I still have another hit enter, now it's entered it, I entered hit
enter, and its input that, let me complete this particular square. Now when I'm at
the end, I can click the endpoint, which was my starting point, but sometimes you
know it may not be exactly on the end point. In this case I'm on grid snap so
it'll snap on to the closest point, but if you accidentally or intentionally had
grid snap off, you may not get to the first point. And you may click somewhere
else, and you may have an incomplete square. So a good and easy way to do this
is by typing close, rather than trying to click on that last
point. So I'm going to type close, hit enter, and it'll close my square. This
gives me a closed square. I hope this gives you an introduction on how to use
this particular software, and in the other demos that we have, we will talk a
little bit more about the different options, the different choices you have,
and how to use some of these surfaces to create solid
objects.