I was going through some old links and ran across this interesting one, Gearify, and was wondering if anyone has used it before? It might be useful for those who wanted to make their own spirographs as well.
The online tool is pretty good, but the download seems to be even better. I’m tempted to set up virtual windows on my mac just for this program alone. (Also, Matthias Wandel is totally my hero.)
Pretty straight forward, but free and easy. And it’s web based so works for everyone.
Incidentally, if anyone knows of a good gear generator that works well on a mac, then please let me know! Thanks.
Yeah, the exports aren’t bad. A while ago I brought one into Illustrator, cleaned it up a bit and then exported to an online 3D modeling tool I was using (Sorry, I can’t remember the name). It was a fairly easy process and worked well enough.
I am hoping to build more complex gearing, though, so the simplicity of GearGenerator will only take me part of the way, sadly.
It’s killing me. I have so many projects to do but right now I’m tying up the Glowforge doing engravings. One reason why I haven’t done too many engravings because of the time it takes for large engravings.
I so want to do some gears. Ronald Walters was just featured on Make having made IRL the yin yang gears. That would be so cool to have in the catalog. I’d download it rather than having to recreate it. http://makezine.com/2017/01/04/yin-yang-gears-real-life/
Has anyone run across a planetary gear generating tool online anywhere that is accurate? I have an idea I think I could knock out pretty quickly if I find one that works and can export a usable file
@takitus, though @mheiselt’s post above mentioned Matthias’s gear generator, just in case you hadn’t clicked through to the page on planetary gears. Ronald Walters seems to have used the program effectively. I did some test runs but only printed the gears on paper.
I did, there wasnt any obvious way to make planetary configurations, but the other worked well so I just kinda skipped over it. Thanks for letting me know it was actually functional though. Could come in handy
Just tried to Download/Purchase Gearify and find that the site’s security certificate expired about 3/25/2018. No longer an https:// site. As a result (for me anyway) getting to the site and trying to use PayPal did not work. PayPal refuses to acknowledge my login.
I wrote postmaster@gearifysoftware.com asking for them to renew their certificate but nothing seems to have happened.
Any one have any recent luck with a download/purchase of gearify?
I purchased a license, and the program is fun and pretty easy to use. However, I haven’t had any luck getting the export file which is DXF, imported into Illustrator or fusion 360 and exported to SVG. Once it’s uploaded to Glowforge the file is totally jacked up. Not sure if this is a problem with Gearify or Glowforge. Anyone have a workflow that actually works into Glowforge???
After finishing your design in Gearify, click on the Save/Export tab. Then click on DXF. Type in the filename of your choice and click on Save. (This “Save” is not the one in Gearify. I think that one saves in gearify format.)
Now find the location of the dxf-file you just saved. (I save to My Documents so that’s where the dxf file is.) Open Inkscape and go to Import. Type in your dxf filename. Inkscape brings up a “DXF Input” window. Set the Manual Scale to whatever you want; think I use 10. Click OK and there you are; the DXF is in Inkscape.
Now edit away and Save Plain SVG to upload to Glowforge.
By the way, my Gearify does not draw a bounding circle around the ring gear. Nor are the colors of the sun, planetary, and ring the same as in the tutorials. Hope this helps.
I will try InkScape to see if that works easier. I have found a work around using Gearify and Illustrator. Once the DFX file is imported into Illustrator, I’m not able to use the save as SVG option, but need to use the export as option. There aren’t as many configuration options, but I was able to get the files uploaded into Glowforge without it messing up the file. Not sure what the different between the two methods, and the export as option seems to work for now.