New to this cad malarky so I'm after a few tips from you pros out there.

I've *cough* acquired solidworks 2003 and autocad 2004 lt.

Just been finding my feet with solidworks and I've managed to knock up a reasonable model of my parents house (they're planning an extension so it gave me a "real" task to try) and I've also recreated my fuel tank - no worries there.

But, I've no idea where to start with creating the chassis. What I've done so far is create a few tubes as separate parts and then built them into an assembly - is this the way to do it?? or am I going about it arse backwards?

Cheers.

Looks like you have got the basics sorted, I use Autodesk Inventor (ALL day EVERY day). Just like you would make it for real, draw all the seperate parts and then assemble them together. You might have fun with some of the cuts and bends. Dont forget to post the finished article.

Gordon

GO, I've done quite a bit with solidworks 2003 now, including a chassis model.

I've tried a few ways of doing it, not sure mine is the best, but I did it with lots of mates and extrude-to-surface, as well as blind extrudes.

If I was doing it again I might try doing it assembly sketch defined, at least partly..

I found my computer started to chug when it got very heavy on mates, so I laid down for example the bottom rails with mates, then fixed them all and suppressed the mates or deleted them, then on to the next tubes..

If you're crafty about how you do this and the order you put the tubes in, you can do things like make the chassis variable width or engine bay length by changing one distance mate in each case.
I have chatted to Jim McSorley and I think this is more or less how he does it too.

If you'd like a copy of my chassis assembly (mcsorley 7+4 based with metric tweaks and some cymtriks extra tubes, variable length engine bay) then u2u me your email address. Same goes for anyone else who's interested.