Article for 2009 Oct 06

2009

2009 Oct

Oct 06 Tue “It’s a CAD-astrophe!”

In Techie today we were using a CAD (computer-aided design) program on the computers to create some moulds. That’s “mould” meaning a hollow piece of metal etc. that molten plastic/metal is poured into (for it to then set and take on the shape of the inside of the mould). Not the fungus!

Anyway, my computer was misbehaving. It was fine until I had to extrude a surface, which meant right-clicking the big blue space, then the program closed with the message “An error has caused Cobra Design to shut down unexpectedly. Please contact...”

So I got the teacher to help.

I fired the program up again, re-did my work, and right-clicked on the big blue space. It shut down with the “An error has caused...” message.

I logged on to another computer, re-did my work, and right-clicked on the big blue space. Again, the software switched itself off. The “An error has caused Cobra Design to shut down unexpectedly” was beginning to be incorrect. “An error has caused Cobra Design to shut down expectedly” would have been more accurate!

I tried again, but this time I saved my work before I right-clicked on the big blue space. And I managed to get my design to extrude without right-clicking on the big blue space.

Then, the teacher asked me if I’d got it into isometric view. I hadn’t: “how do you do that?” “You right-click on the big blue space.”