Having never used any CAD software before, i've got a few

>>1030559
I have solidworks and it will do that, I assume AutoCAD would as well. If you are in qld let me know when the airboat is done, I'd love to see it

>>1030559
Sorry mate, just north of the murray.

Thanks. I'll have to spend the next week or two learning how to do everything on autocad. Should be fun.

Will be the first time working on an engine too. Hoping to find a wrecked commodore for cheap. An ls1 is apparently easy to work on and can bring out some power fairly easily. Never had a chance to work on cars or anything, so i'm stoked.

sounds like you're not an engineer.. be sure to wear a life vest when you take your airboat out!

>>1030559
Autocad is the wrong program to do this in.

Solidworks was made for shit like this, autodesk inventor will also do this but it's gay like autocad.

>>1030570
I taught myself solidworks and it was pretty easy. I'm actually a mechanic, how much power do you need? Ls1s are cheap, fairly compact and relatively light. They do make good power.

>>1030572
nah, apprentice heavy fabricator/welder.

>>1030573
Righto, i'll have a look at Solidworks then.

>>1030576
Rather than how much power i need, it's more a case of I need to know how much power I have to properly pick the prop and gearing.

I'd love to put a supercharger or turbo on it. Can fabricate a lot of the things i'd need myself. I'd love a 500hp motor. But that's mostly vanity rather than purely functional needs.

50% of the reason I'm going to build something so fuck off ridiculous is i'm trying to make a name for myself around town and pick up more weekend work.

>>1030559
get solidworks nigga. the sim packages are dope.

>>1030581
fuck me swinging. it's $4k for solidworks?

>>1030594
solidworks is "free"

>>1030594
It's free from certain places.

>>1030580
Ls1 will have no problem making 500 crank horsepower with a decent tune and a cam.

>>1030600
yeah. Gonna have to go that path. Don't really like torrenting, but oh well.

And yeah. Everything I'm looking at says that 500hp shouldnt be too much of an issue. Does need to be done fairly reliably.

>>1030594
Yes, it's the same as autocad or any other cad program out there.

Don't pay for it obviously.

Fusion 360 is free for normies (enthusiasts, businesses that make less than some revenue threshold). Take a look at that, I think it should be able to do what you want.

I'd torrent solidworks before doing fusion 360. The modeling/history tree just isn't properly done and the whole thing is layed out weirdly. As the others have said you can do it in AutoCAD but parametric modeling from inventor or solidworks would be a lot easier. Also if I recall, the monthly licensing for inventor in addition to AutoCAD is only about $50 more a month if you wanted to keep it all above the board. If you do I'd use AutoCAD for making drawings and Inventor for the modeling. Solidworks is a good all in one but getting your standard borders and drawing templates can be a pain. Fusion's only good point from my standpoint is remote graphics options so you can run it smoother on a home pc that's not up to snuff.

Just wanted to add my .02 as someone that does this for a living.

>>1030559

I don't think any mere mortal using a cad package (including me) is going to do a good job on the FEA of a thin wall tubular structure. Meshing that is going to be very difficult. You will get numbers from the cad, but they will be worthless.

(weight of the structure of course will be correct)

An undergraduate ME that has gone though statics should be able to figure out the stress and bending moments on each tubular element and hand compute the proper tube sizes & wall thickness for a given factor of safety.

As a ME, this is not something I would expect a fabricator to do. But in a couple years you will probably be able to lay a better tig bead on the tubing in spite of a mean hangover than my best effort.

You want some sort of parametric 3d cad system for the design. solidworks, solidedge, autodesk inventor, unigraphics, proE, are all the ones I can name from the top of my head.

But you can always weld the sucker up with no formal analysis and rig up some sort of load say 3x the peak thrust your propeller could generate and see if / where it bends first and iterate the design. (inspect for cracking periodically after you are done in case the design is marginal)

Have fun. This strikes me as a very achievable goal.

>>1030655
Get solidworks simulation to do it. Trying to do those calculations by hand, especially with diagonal or non beamlike members is a major pain in the ass and you are more likely to make mistakes because hand calculations use equations for extremely simplified situations that have to be applied properly; choose the wrong equation to use and your result will be worse than any FEA sim.

Easiest way to do this is make your frame in weldments, add some flat tabs to where it will be attached to the boat, add some tabs where the engine will mount and then apply your boundary conditions to those tabs. Use fixed condition on the mounting point to the boat and apply a distributed load to the engine mounts, divide the thrust or engine weight by the number of mounting points.

Look up the stress strain curve of whatever alloy you are using and make sure that the deformation that simulation gives you is within the linear elastic region. Also remember that aluminum has no endurance limit, so if you're using aluminum keep deformation as low as possible.

>>1030594
you can get a full copy of Autodesk Inventor Pro just by saying you go to college

>>1030559
Get either autodeak inventor or Solidworks if you are a student (they offer a great discount price) otherwise you should look into onshape, it's made by the creators of Solidworks and it's free.