I wanted to learn (in detail) how a combustion engine works, and I have no tools to build one in parts, so I decided this christmas break to model one.
Now some caveats: I am a software engineer, so the following is missing a lot of things as it is still a work in progress, but it gets some basics concepts working. Please don’t actually build this it probably won’t work!
From here you can see a few things:
- I improved in making gears (see the yellow one)
- The timing is off, very off :D, I will fix it when I get a chance, but the point is I know how it works
- The exhaust valves are missing the rockers, and cam lobes. WIP
- I learnt about a balancer, so I was thinking of putting that in.
- Clutch/transmission. I might have to get back to my day job and project for the future.
Here are somethings I think Shapr3D really needs:
- A way to copy, move, repeat. For example I want to copy a gear tooth, rotated 18 degrees, repeated 19 times (the 20th gear is the source gear).
- Reflection body (not sure of the accurate 3d modeling term) where I can build one piston and create a reflection for the subsequent pistons, meaning if I change the master piston the reflected body also changes. Sort of a pointer to the master body. This would have made my life so much easier in a lot of places.
- icloud/google-drive support, useful if I can ensure the designs are always in a cloud somewhere. Also I haven’t used the macOS version but being able to switch between the two will definitely be vital.