OnShape vs SketchUp! – a model railroader’s view

Well, I’m a few weeks into my OnShape journey now, and I must say I’m impressed. After my experience with FreeCad and Blendr, I was almost ready huck my Linux machine out the window when Vince pointed me toward OnShape. I’m thankful he did. For several years I was a staunch advocate for SketchUp! but […]

Replacing Sketchup

I finally gave up on Windows. Oh, I’m no anti-Windows bigot (at least not anymore): I am very productive on the platform we all love to hate. The problem was that the laptop forgot its license key, and due to poor record-keeping, so did everyone else. To make a long story short, I downloaded Ubuntu and have […]

A new test track

As mentioned a little while ago, Pembroke didn’t have a programming track until recently. For most of the past couple of weeks, the programming track has been a section of flex track on my workbench. This is clearly not sustainable, and so, I have now lifted it off the workbench. Six and three-quarter inches off […]

Cricut – mirror experiment

In my last experiments with the Cricut, I found I could control the direction that the cutter takes by mirroring the panes in my N-scale windows. Unfortunately, it seems that this knowledge does not make much of a difference in the cutter’s precision. To test the theory, I cut 56 windows (224 mullions), spread evenly […]

Cricut Installed

One of the challenges with getting computer equipment is where to put it. So many devices have curvy corners and odd shapes and a need for odd footprints. They all have wires that need to connect to something, even if it is only for power. So, it was with glee that I found that the […]

Experiments with Precision Cricutting

Because my experiments getting my Cricut to cut N scale window mullions yielded mixed results, I did some experiments this evening to see if I could improve. Because my initial panes seemed to be undersized, I started by cutting some 1″ squares in card. From Design Space, these turned out to be surprisingly accurate, and […]

Cricutting Styrene

It took a fair amount of experimentation, gradually increasing pressure and number of passes, but I finally got my Cricut Explore to cut all the way through .010″ styrene. With my regular blade, it takes 5 passes at 300 g pressure to cut through. Members of the Facebook group say that it should take fewer cuts with […]

Inkscape and Cricut

As I mentioned yesterday, I was very happy that the first attempt to get something to cut with the Cricut was successful. However, the Cricut Design Space program is pretty much useless for composing all but the simplest shapes, and so, I cast about for a free drawing program. I happened across Inkscape, which feels familiar […]

Cricut – a new tool in the workshop

Happy Christmas to one and all! I hope Santa was nice to you. Here in North Vancouver, he didn’t disappoint: I found a Cricut Explore Air under our tree! Well, actually not under the tree, per se, because it didn’t fit, but it was in the vicinity and it had my name on it. The […]

Stock Storage

I’ve been meaning to write this up for years, and a recent thread over at Model Railroad Hobbyist has encouraged me to finally post something on the topic. If you’re reading this blog, you probably have a collection of long narrow packages of strip styrene, scale lumber, maybe some brass wire and tube and so […]