Hey,

I new to ViaCAD, I currently use Alibre Design but I not excited about upgrading to the new version. So I am looking for an alternative. I design 1/6 scale hobby models as a part time hobby and sometimes I sell the designs. So I need to design complex assemblies of many different small parts. I realize ViaCAD dose not seem to support separate parts and assemblies like my current tool. From reading topics at this forum it seems like people design individual part files and then import them into large assembly files. I also seem that people seem to use "layers" to hide detail in the assembly and even make each part its own layer. It seems like the "import" approach is restrictive because once you import the part, you can't change the original without deleting it from the assembly and re-importing it.

In some of the examples I have also seem "things" labeled as parts vs. the basic lines and such. So I am wondering if someone could describe the general workflow? Can you create multiple parts in the same file, or do you need to create separate files and import them to create parts? What is the approach to produce complex assemblies? Is ViaCAd the right tool for these types of projects? I have gone through the Users manual but if there is something else to read that would be great.

Thanks,
Dale

I have found that with complex assemblies it is always better to model individual parts and then import them into a final assembly, this does not only apply to Viacad or Shark, it also applies to programs like Solidworks and Autocad.

Edited by user Friday, January 29, 2016 2:31:10 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified