VirtualMEC

VirtualMEC is a CAD tool that puts the emphasis on helping you with your Meccano designs. Just in case there’s someone out there who is not familiar with Meccano, let me quickly put things in perspective: it is a model construction system comprised of re-usable metal strips, plates, angle girders, wheels, axles, gears, and so on. You can use Meccano bits in the virtual environment that VirtualMEC has to offer and thus design just about anything that goes through your mind.

The minimum requirements for running VirtualMEC are as follows: 1GHz processor or better, 1GB of RAM memory or more, 100MB of free disk space, monitor resolution of 800 x 600 pixels with 65536 colors or more, Windows operating system (anything from Windows XP onward).

The main panel on the interface presents the model you’re working on. You can have more than one model open; a tab will be assigned to each model you open, the tabs will be color-coded and presented in the upper left hand corner. To the right there’s a panel that lists all the Meccano pieces you can use. And at the top there’s a traditional File Menu and toolbars for various functions VirtualMEC can perform.

It must be mentioned here that you can change the interface’s look. You can do so from the View Menu, the appropriately named Application Look submenu.

To help you better understand how to use VirtualMEC, there’s a tutorial that will show you how to build a simple scooter. You can access the tutorial from the application’s Help menu or you can view it online on the application’s official website. The designs from the Tutorial, for all the stages of building the scooter, are built into the application. You can easily load them and play with them.

Build anything you want in a safe, virtual environment. Use VirtualMEC to come up with great Meccano models.