Any engineers about?

[MarauderX]

I got a couple of d2's in my change pocket, need help drafting those up? The sides are perfectly equal too. In the meantime I'll send over my hourly rates...

 

[Kalendraf]

There are an infinite number of possible die shapes, if you aren't restricting yourself to regular solids. One can construct a fair die out of an irregular polyhedron, but it takes a lot of work to make it fair.

Or useable. Potentially, you can take a rod-shaped dice (similar to the crystal-dice) of any number of sides. Eventually you need to increase the thickness to make them readable as well as to maintain a large-enough flat spot. After a while that method becomes too prohibitively difficult to use as the diameters become too big to really use very easily. "Look out, he's rolling the log again!"

 

[tarchon]

Well, really you probably don't need 3D design tools to design a die, unless you want to fabricate it with a rapid prototyping system or something.

 

[Psionicist]

SketchUp might do the trick. It is not a CAD program, and it is not 3DSMax, but I think it's what you are looking for.

Award winning SketchUp presents a completely new way to design in 3D on the computer. Developed for the conceptual stages of design, this powerful, easy-to-learn software allows for quick and easy 3D form creation, modification and communication. Sophisticated enough for complex projects yet accessible for beginners, SketchUp allows everyone from Architects to hobbyists to design in 3D. And it plays well with others! SketchUp exchanges data with all standard CAD, 3D modeling, image editing, and illustration applications.

($475) and free trial at http://www.sketchup.com/

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

AutoCad then? I'll have to get me one of those! Thanks!

Please Don't. I'm a CAD Enginer. I've got many years of Autocad experience. I'm curretnly using AoutCAD Lite.

If you want to do a bunch of rendering/3-d work You'd need 3-d studio and a beast of a computer. The price is scary. That said...

If you want, here the cheapest way to do it. Steal it. But don't. Autodesk has some of the more agressive anti-priracy policies out there. Use an illegal copy you could get burned. (This is a WARNING, not an actual suggestion)

The second cheapest way involves being a student. you can get a student copy of 3-d Studio (which includes Autocad) for about 300 bucks (It might have gone up by now). Take a class too.

AutoCad's overkill for what you want. Look around, there's a bunch of 3-d generators out there. All for a lot less than what Autocad'd cost you.