3D video tutorial: Create a 3D wheel with cylinders

This is a fairly simple wheel with a center tube for an axle/pole, a rim, and 6 holes. You can create a 3D wheel like this entirely with cylinders! Watch this 9-minute video tutorial and follow along to create it from scratch yourself.

You’ll learn how to:

• Create cylinders: Cylinders are an obvious choice for a wheel and are often used in mechanical drawings.
• Set the workspace to 3D Modeling: The 3D Modeling workspace gives you all the tools you need for 3D work; you won’t find them in the default workspace
• Use the SUBTRACT and UNION commands: These are called Boolean commands and they let you carve out holes and combine objects
• Change the visual style to check your work: The default wireframe makes some work easier, but it’s really hard to tell if you made mistakes. This image uses the Conceptual visual style, which makes everything very clear.
• and a few more tasks.

The basic concepts are applicable to many types of 3D models.

Here’s the video. Let me know in the comments what you think! Do you have suggestions for drawing this differently? Did you run into problems? And use the Share buttons below the post to share with your colleagues so they can practice it, too!

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Ellen Finkelstein

Ellen Finkelstein is the author of the best-selling AutoCAD & AutoCAD LT Bible, which started with R14. Ellen has written extensively on AutoCAD, including articles for Autodesk’s website and features for AutoCAD’s Help system. Ellen’s first book was AutoCAD For Dummies Quick Reference.

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