Autocad Frustration

[bobgaggle]

Maybe this goes in off topic, but CAD is really making me mad lately. The new project is a kids play area for a museum, lots of concentric circles. Varying platform/bench/stair heights. I wish there was a "tube" command that would let you adjust both radii of a tube. Like, if I draw the skin of a curved wall as a 3d solid and realize later it needs to be 1" smaller, I have to delete the whole thing and redraw it. It would be awesome if I could just go in the properties and change the ID to x and the OD to y. This program is clunky when it comes to doing cylinders....

 

[Van]

I'm not good with 3d AutoCAD but I understand your frustration. It's why I love Sketchup so much.

 

[MNicolai]

I think what you may be looking for is this, where you draw the 3D path that you want and then you draw a 2D profile to get extruded along the full length of the path.

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Depending on what you're doing, it might be a lot easier though to draw in plan though and extrude vertically, like you would in Sketchup.

 

[bobgaggle]

Depending on what you're doing, it might be a lot easier though to draw in plan though and extrude vertically, like you would in Sketchup.

That's usually how a draw, but lets say I draw 2 concentric cylinders, then SUBTRACT the smaller one from the larger one. Now I have a 3d solid with no way to modify either of the diameters. If I want a smaller bore I have to draw more cylinders. Inventor solved this pretty handily with the HOLE command. You can adjust the diameter whenever you want...