rattleCAD

rattleCAD is a lightweight application that helps users create bicycle mock-ups by setting up the geometry variables and selecting from different preset system components.

Since this is a portable program, it is important to mention that it doesn’t leave any traces in the Windows Registry. You can copy it on any USB flash drive or other devices, and take it with you whenever you need to design a bicycle’s geometry.

The user interface is clean and offers quick access to its most important functions. Unfortunately, the entire process is not very intuitive and you may spend some time trying to configure the dedicated parameters.

There are several bicycle components to choose from, namely brakes, forks, handlebars, saddles, bottle cages, and others. On the downside, you cannot use the mouse cursor to adjust their position in the working environment, so you have to insert the values in the dedicated dialogs manually.

When it comes to configuration settings, the application allows users to change the distance and height for handlebars and saddles, as well as the dimensions for forks, wheels, brackets and many others. It is also possible to zoom in or out of the generated designs.

What’s more, you can change the diameter for the front and rear wheels, select the fork type, as well as configure the tube dimensions. The generated projects can be exported to SVG, DXF, HTML or PDF.

During our testing we have noticed that the program offers very good image quality and remains light on the system resources.

All things considered, rattleCAD comes packed with many dedicated parameters for helping users design a bicycle’s geometry, but it doesn’t provide an intuitive working environment.