Mechanism Resources

This one’s for the mech heads and purveyors of fine machinery. Cornell University’s Reuleaux Collection is a collection of 220 machines. The machines include various crank mechanisms, couplings, linkages, compound gearing… the list goes on. The website itself is a catalogue of the 19th century machines - some with accompanying videos and technical documentation. In my opinion, the machines themselves are functional, beautifully crafted works of art; they deserve some attention....
Solutions

Scratch! (An AutoCAD Scratchpad Utility)

Scratch provides a quick & simple way to utilize a temporary scratchpad layer in AutoCAD. Scratch allows you to quickly switch in & out of the scratchpad layer, and throw it away whenever you want, leaving the rest of your AutoCAD drawing untouched. I’ve been using it for transferring geometry building complex shapes (I use the boundary command later to create objects) throwaway dimensions (when estimating & sketching ideas) Download UPDATE: Scratch v0....
AutoCAD Code

Ruby Shapes

What is RubyShapes? RubyShapes is a Ruby library that defines Shape objects analogous to geometric cross-sections. These Shape objects “have” the same geometric properties that their real world counterparts do. The long term goal is to use RubyShape objects as building blocks for a larger structural and mechanical calculation software library. Geometric cross sections? These are cross sections of 3D objects (square rods, circular rods, rectangular tubing, etc.) Each shapes’ cross section has properties that are that are used in structural and mechanical calculations....
Code

Transmaterial

For those of you who are interested in new materials, check out Transmaterial. I can’t describe it better than this quote from the site: …Transmaterial online is intended to be a clear, concise, accessible, and carefully edited resource that provides information about the latest and most intriguing materials commercially available. A little more… As the speed of technological progress continues to accelerate, innovation threatens to outpace architects’ and designers’ working knowledge of materials thereby limiting their applicability....

Flattening Cones

Update: I just updated this frustum calculator with javascript versions that will run from the browser. One will calculate the flattened frustum from the radii, the other uses the circumferences of the frustum shape. Have you ever wanted to lay out the frustum of a cone on a flat surface?” “A what?” “A frustum, the part of a cone that is left when you lop off the top.” “Oh, yeah. If I had a nickel… sadly, I’m still poor....
Math Tools

CADalyzer 0.7 Update (AutoCAD Command Counter)

This is an update to the Cadalyzer script that I posted a few months ago. It will count the number of commands you have used in AutoCAD; it does this by examining your AutoCAD log files. (You can enable log files in AutoCAD’s options dialogue box.) Cadalyzer 0.7 on GitHub New features are listed below Counting mechanism has be rebuilt, the script now computes 25 times faster than the previous version!...
AutoCAD Code