Anyone use woodgears?

[Tony Pisano]

Has anyone used woodgears.ca software? It looks like a cool program and I downloaded the free trial, but when I tried to run it it said I needed another microsoft program, Netframework 2.0 something to run it. Its all a little confusing to me. I wish they just had a disk you could pop in and be good to go. I have a love hate relationship with computers and am always afraid I'm going to screw something up

[Roger Feeley]

Full disclosure: I've never tried it.

Are you sure that wasn't .NET framework 2.0. You should be able to get that from Microsoft somewhere. It also tells us that the program is a bit long in the tooth. I just looked on Wikipedia and 2.0 dates back to 2005. For myself, I wouldn't be afraid to run it.

Keeping multiple versions of .NET shouldn't cause you a problem. Here's the thing (and people can correct me if I'm wrong).
In the bad old days of the original Windows, we had dlls. You would XYZ.dll that would provide some service. Programs could access that service by simply linking to the dll and using it. The problem was versions. Let's say there are 10 versions of XYZ. You are running fine with version 1 and then you install some software that want's version 5. The installer overwrites your XYZ.dll with a later version and things get complicated. In those days, XYZ was supposed to be backwards compatible. That is, the software that wanted version 1 would still work. But that wasn't always the case and we all dreaded updates.

With things like .NET frameworks, there are still dlls but they are organized by version. So an application that want .NET 2.0 can go find it (if you have it installed). .NET 2.0 should be able to coexist with .NET 4.6.2 (the latest) because they know where to look. Both would provide our old friend XYZ but each application would get the one it expects.

[Grant Wilkinson]

I have used and still use Woodgears (Matthias Wandell) gear maker. It does rely on Microsoft's net framework, as do many commercial programs. I've never had a problem with any of his applications.

[Steve Peterson]

Are you trying to generate a gear profile? There are several gear generators on the web if woodgears is not working for you.

GearDFX - A program that you download and run locally. Saves DFX output.
geargenerator.com - Online program that allows you to model an entire gear chain. It is really cool to watch. Only appears to output SVG format.
EmachineShop.com - Another software download that runs locally. Free to use, but their target is for you to have them make the gears for you. Saves DFX output.
gearotic - This one gets a lot of positive reviews, but now costs $120.

Steve

[Tony Pisano]

Yes it was .NET Framework2.0. I found it and downloaded and now the demo version of gearworks runs. I wanted to be sure before purchasing anything. It looks like so much fun, I could imaging just making gears forever. I wanted something that would let me print out the templates and this seems to fit the bill. Thanks guys.

[Grant Wilkinson]

Matthias have many build videos on his Youtube site. Several of them have him using his gear generator to print template, then cut them out. You can get some tips on the best way to cut them out through those videos.

[Tony Pisano]

Thanks everyone. I purchased the program and before work last night knocked of a couple of quick gears on the bandsaw and they worked. I think I will have lots of fun with this.