Darby,
I apologize for the delayed answer - I was traveling to US to do more
demonstrations of UmTRX.
No worries, Im sure youre a busy guy -especially at this stage of the
project =)
I'm not sure whether you actually need a 3D design here? As I see it,
you select a proper existing case and just design
front/rear panels
and drilling pattern for mounting. I may be wrong, though - I've never
done this before. I just worry that a fully custom case could be too
expensive in small quantities.
Im sure you could use a preexisting design, and just punch some holes
in the sides for convection cooling, then punch some holes in the back
to accommodate power & cabling, and use some motherboard standoffs
that would keep the board mounted in place on the enclosure floor.
I was thinking more along the lines of stamped/bent sheet metal, some
lightpipes (plexyglass or polycarbonate) in the front so youve got
visibility of the lights in the front & some countersunk holes on the
sides to keep the 2 C shaped (or L shaped would work well too? -Which
might be a better implementation for mounting purposes if youre going
with lightpipes as opposed to holes in the case for lights) pieces
bolted together & a powdercoated or painted finish?
I found some design tools at protocase, that it looks as though will
pushout 3d cad files as deliverables, but looking thru the project
files -I cant seem to find anything that would give me specifics on
distances between the mounting holes from each other's centerpoints &
how wide these holes are, If someone can point me to a place where I
can find this -Ill take a stab at case design when Ive got some free
time... =)
On a side note, They also have an extruded aluminum offering
(
http://www.protocase.com/products/index.php?e=Aluminum) where the
sides are the same between the left & the right, with a fixed height
of 1.72" (43.688mm). For mounting they use some internal channels that
the board will slide into (as opposed to motherboard standoffs as
suggested above) then they use a sheetmetal bridge for the top &
bottom to determine the width & then sheetmetal on front & back as
well -Depending on quantity, they might be willing to sell lengths
(like say 10 or 20ft at a time) that your people could cut to size &
fabricate their own top/bottom/front/back panels?
Just a thought...