37> Coming …Soon?

At the very beginning of this blog, I envisioned the possibility and intention of collaboratively designing a PRT system, and I have taken a step in that direction. The first problem was the fact that not everybody who could make a valuable contribution to a design has access to, or knows how to use, AutoCAD, or even a vector based drawing program. (Or a decent paint program for that matter)
Alert reader and frequent commenter akauppi, when asked about this matter, suggested Inkscape for a Drawing program and Acorn for a paint program, both free to download. Apparently Acorn is only for Macs, but I have found what I consider to be a great, free paint program in Paint.Net, which, by supporting layers of variable transparency, allows on-screen positioning of separately created parts. The most exciting to me, however, are the tools provided by Google. Besides hosting this blog and my email account and analytics, they give away a very competent 3D design program called SketchUp, which I used to draw the second illustration of the last post. But there’s still more. Google also hosts space and tools for project collaboration. Although they are intended for code development, there is no reason why they can’t be used for the design software listed above. They even include tools for revision control and a wiki. So coming soon, you’ll be able to modify my designs and post those revisions. But I have to warn you, I know very, very little about SVN (look it up in Wikipedia. I had to) and Sketchup takes time to learn as well.. Meanwhile, a simple question was asked about my last post. What’s so special about the layout of those wheels? (Refer to the illustrations from the last post) well, if akauppi, doesn’t get it, I guess I better explain for all.
A good design begins, foremost, with a good understanding of what you’re trying to do and what you have to work with. In the case of all of those wheels, vs. the expected forces exerted on them, it is geometry. Move the wheels up or down, forward or backward, and the performance changes. (I would like to note, however, that these illustrations are consistent with PML’s wheel-motors and my scheme for climbing steep slopes) And then there is the track (which, because track is reproduced into infinity, is really, really important to get right)
I could write a few paragraphs on every dimension and every angle, but have not, because I recognize that I have attracted many readers who are not engineering oriented, and this is a good thing, because we’re not designing transportation for engineers. This blog has attracted a group of very thoughtful contributors, and I feel confident that the core design issues are being dealt with in a forum that will eventually yield superior results to the “top-down” approach that commercial enterprises have to use. I want to urge patience, however, because good designs take a long time, even for teams of full-timers.