Playing with (Anker)Stones

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r-frank
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Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by r-frank »

Now this is a fun project I was planning to do in FreeCAD for a long time (and one of the reasons I started with FreeCAD).
In my childhood I played with LEGO a lot ...

Some time ago I learned that german pioneer Otto Lilienthal invented some sort of artifical stone made of compressed powder.
He sold the patent to a guy named Richter who founded a company and began to produce stone-sets for children (Ankerfabrik).

Some time ago an anker friend persuaded the Programmer of BlockCAD to make a special "AnkerCAD-Version".

But since the only output of AnkerCAD is its native format and a pov-ray file (and I am still not really a fan of pov-ray) I began to
model most of the stones in FreeCAD (after chamfering each stone they looked much better), making simple copies of the stones
and putting together the first few starter sets.
After that I took some plans from the internet for the starter sets and began to put some assemblies together (using placement and
the draft-workbench).

Next step would be to begin rendering with luxrender/kerkythea/appleseed.
Here are my first reults in FreeCAD:
Anker models ...
Anker models ...
Ankersteine_Assemblies.jpg (370.45 KiB) Viewed 6704 times
Roland
Deutsche FreeCAD Tutorials auf Youtube
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FreeCAD lessons for beginners in english

Native german speaker - so apologies for my english, no offense intended :)
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clintonsam75
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Re: Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by clintonsam75 »

I love it! I think it's a great way to get kids interested in engineering by using CAD software. Are you willing to share your models?
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r-frank
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Re: Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by r-frank »

Sure I will share.

Visit my github account.
1) Standard Parts Library -> contains mechanical standard parts and a directory called "ankersteine"
There are the parametric models and the simplified copies of the stones and some pre(factory)-defined sets.
The "real" stone library contains several hundreds of stones.
I firstly created the most obviously needed ones ...

2) Youtube-Tutorial-Models
Well, the (soon to be continued) models I produce for my german and english youtube channel (see signature)

3) Ankersteine-Models
The three models posted here and an additional one.
I downloaded a lot of cad building plans from fans, i hope i will find time to do more designs.
I am still dreaming of having a virtual model of germany's famous Frauenkirche in Dresden.
Oh, the text is (a little) obsolete.
The church was re-erected.
I was once there and inside (as a tourist). Very impressive and inspiring ...

I also published some models on GrabCAD (see my signature).

Roland
Deutsche FreeCAD Tutorials auf Youtube
My GrabCAD FreeCAD-Projects
FreeCAD lessons for beginners in english

Native german speaker - so apologies for my english, no offense intended :)
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clintonsam75
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Re: Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by clintonsam75 »

r-frank wrote:Sure I will share.

Visit my github account.
I did and saw the long list of items. You certainly have been busy. One problem I've run into is that I don't know what anything is just from the name alone and I haven't seen any screenshots. That makes it a bit cumbersome. But maybe I can help you out with that if you like.
2) Youtube-Tutorial-Models
Well, the (soon to be continued) models I produce for my german and english youtube channel (see signature)
For a non-native English speaker, you actually speak English quite well. :-)
I also published some models on GrabCAD (see my signature).
GrabCAD is a pretty neat idea. I actually came up with an open source patent system that works something like GrabCAD and Github but in a more standard format. What makes it so great in my mind is the financial reward system. I hope to be able to get the idea off the ground some day. Until then, I think getting some experience using GrabCAD and Github will be very beneficial in that regard. After seeing your account on GrabCAD, I went and created an account too. https://grabcad.com/clinton.sam-1. My Github account is here https://github.com/clintonsam75. Obviously I'm not very active yet but I will probably ease into it as time goes by. My hobbies range from engineering, electronics, programming and society and I bounce around between them. I might focus on one area for days or sometimes months then I lose interest and switch to one of the others so my progress can be slow at times. But I do make sure that no matter which area I work on it is related to my main focus which is society.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your models. I hope they make their way into a well known and useful place within the community.
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Re: Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by NormandC »

clintonsam75 wrote:One problem I've run into is that I don't know what anything is just from the name alone and I haven't seen any screenshots. That makes it a bit cumbersome.
This is little known, but Github has an STL viewer. If you push STL files exported from the original FCStd files, you can see what they look like.

Here's one example: https://github.com/yorikvanhavre/FreeCA ... earing.stl
clintonsam75 wrote:GrabCAD is a pretty neat idea. I actually came up with an open source patent system that works something like GrabCAD and Github but in a more standard format.
I dislike GrabCAD because it forces you to register to download models. I may be prejudiced, but to me it seems very commercial-oriented. What's their end game? I mean, why is it free? It's owned by Stratasys. I'm sure their stockholders expect it to turn a profit.

Since we're using an open source program, I would prefer open source solutions (I know, Github isn't open source). I think CADinet is a promising step in the right direction, but Johannes has not had much time to develop it further.
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clintonsam75
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Re: Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by clintonsam75 »

NormandC wrote:This is little known, but Github has an STL viewer. If you push STL files exported from the original FCStd files, you can see what they look like.
Yes, but all of the Ankersteine models are in fcstd format. Is there a batch script out there that will convert all fcstd files within a directory to stl?
NormandC wrote:I dislike GrabCAD because it forces you to register to download models. I may be prejudiced, but to me it seems very commercial-oriented. What's their end game? I mean, why is it free? It's owned by Stratasys. I'm sure their stockholders expect it to turn a profit.
I have the same thoughts about Open Cascade Technology. Surely they have an ulterior motive. Let's face it. Who's a saint? We all have needs, right? Whether its self promotion or paying the rent. I have nothing against commercial development. I'm all for it. I'm against barriers to entry and I'm against monopolies. I don't like the idea of someone taking my work, improving on my work, then forcing me out of benefiting from my work because they now own a patent on my work. They should pay me for every sale they make which uses my work regardless of whether or not they improved upon it. I should pay them for their work if I sell an item that uses an improvement they added. No one should not have the right to produce, distribute and sell any work at all. I should not have the right to tell you that you can't produce and sell something I made. I do not need to have the right to set the price that you must pay me however. That can be left up to a democratic government by way of categorizing works. Anyway, I'm going into too much detail already. You can read the summary presentation I've been working on here https://www.dropbox.com/s/j1tyht711sl2c ... r.zip?dl=0
Since we're using an open source program, I would prefer open source solutions (I know, Github isn't open source). I think CADinet is a promising step in the right direction, but Johannes has not had much time to develop it further.
It looks good. You know the worst problem with Open Source is the skilled labor shortage. I'm sure you know that Linux received a lot of its code from the US government. Tor was developed by the US government. Blender is funded by a government too, Netherlands. And all that funding is what pays the project owners so that they can work full time on growing their network of contacts, creating alliances with businesses and non-profits and write code. Do you know that Google's Summer of Code program pays $6,000 usd per person to students to write code for non-profit organizations? $5,500 goes to the student programmer and $500 goes to their "mentor."
Last edited by clintonsam75 on Tue May 12, 2015 6:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
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NormandC
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Re: Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by NormandC »

clintonsam75 wrote:Is there a batch script out there that will convert all fcstd files within a directory to stl?
That subject has come up quite a few times in the Python scripting and macros forum, I'm sure you can find something. I once needed something similar for a project of mine, but don't recall if I ever used a script.
clintonsam75 wrote:I have the same thoughts about Open Cascade Technology. Surely they have an ulterior motive.
There's a huge difference: OCCT has open sourced its code. GrabCAD has not.

I have no problem with open source development turning a profit. See for example Red Hat, a 1.5 billion dollar company which supports Fedora and a huge part of the GNOME code base. Without them and other companies, Linux would definitely not be what it is today.

OCCT has paid customers who drive its development. Sure, they get more stuff than non-paying customers do (commercial file translators for example), and they get to have a say on the focus of development; but at least some of it goes into the open source code.

My problem is with freemium software or platforms. Open source, I can trust; free closed source stuff, not so much.

But I'm afraid we have hijacked r-frank's topic. :oops:
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clintonsam75
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Re: Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by clintonsam75 »

NormandC wrote:But I'm afraid we have hijacked r-frank's topic. :oops:
Oops. Sorry about that. :oops:
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Re: Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by bernd »

Henning
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Re: Playing with (Anker)Stones

Post by Henning »

Hi Roland,
r-frank wrote:Some time ago I learned that german pioneer Otto Lilienthal invented some sort of artifical stone made of compressed powder.
He sold the patent to a guy named Richter who founded a company and began to produce stone-sets for children (Ankerfabrik).
Otto's brother Gustav, an architect by trade, also contributed to the invention and might well have had the original idea, so I think he deserves mention, too :-)
r-frank wrote: But since the only output of AnkerCAD is its native format and a pov-ray file (and I am still not really a fan of pov-ray) I began to
model most of the stones in FreeCAD (after chamfering each stone they looked much better), making simple copies of the stones
and putting together the first few starter sets.
It occurred to me with 3D printing in "Sandstone" being vailable on Shapeways, it might be possible to print additional Anker stones. My girlfriend just loves the gothic archs, but is not happy they come in two halves (except for the really tiny ones).

After roughly drafting a combined #130 + #131 arch (http://www.ankerstein.de/download/Steinkatalog-2015.pdf ), I had one look at the price, and canned the idea ...
Anker.jpg
Anker.jpg (47.13 KiB) Viewed 4046 times
Still great fun! :-)

Regards,

Henning
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