Hello 3d printing community! I’m a complete newb and I am planning on doing a lot of 3d printing in the coming months.
I wanted to get into 3d printing with the intention of designing a lot of models and printing them for use around the house. So, I wanted to ask what people typically use for designing their own models to print?
Ideally the software would support both Windows and Mac as that’s what I typically use these days. Let me know, thanks!
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FreeCAD aside, if you want to go somewhat commercial there is “Moment Of Invention”. I tried the free 90 trial and it was really powerfull and somewhat simpler than FreeCAD.
Additionally, no subscription, no cloud, just the software.
Not to be a stereotypically insufferable Stallman style neckbeard about it, but the only two objectively correct answers to this question are FreeCAD for mechanical parametric things, and Blender for organic shapes or decorative models. (You can also bully Blender into doing parametric CAD work with plugins. And I guess OpenSCAD also counts, if you would rather program your models rather than model your models.)
All of the other available commercial options are some combination of:
- Proprietary vendor lock-in bullshit
- Subscription model “software as a service” perpetual money sinks
- Always online cloud services that either steal your models/make them available to anyone/probably also report you to the Feds
- Loaded with quasi-legal licensing restrictions that prevent you from distributing or selling your own creations made with it
Or for extra bonus points, all of the above!
FreeCAD isn’t exactly slick and it has a rather precipitous learning curve, but it’s also basically the only viable truly free option that won’t spy on you, steal your stuff, or turn you upside down and shake you for money on a monthly basis.
I agree with everything except relegating Blender to organics and decorative designs. Blender is absolutely viable for hard surface /mechanical modeling. Even without the parametric addons. The Boolean modifiers are much more reliable than they used to be and all the tools for manipulating objects makes the whole design process very fast. Everything I make these days is almost entirely non-destructive, which means edits are painless as well.
There are of course limitations such as compound fillets being very difficult to execute cleanly if not downright imposible in some cases.
Have you tried the parametric addons? I can’t imagine they work all that well but I haven’t looked into them in the past 5 or so years.
Hey, OpenSCAD is the best! Also Shapelab seems like it might be interesting (sculpt in VR), though I haven’t yet tried it.
Another consideration… If you are a programmer type then OpenSCAD is a language-based program. I’ve been using it heavily for the past week designing a dual-filament extruder for my Ender 3, and last year I designed and built a utility trailer. As with anything it has its quirks, but I’m much more comfortable writing code and I always found the other GUI-oriented programs to be unintuitive.
Also Build123d, which does BREP instead of only meshes. https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
Aww man, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone was going to “force” me to learn python. Thanks for the link, I’ll take a look at this after dinner.
build123d is vastly superior code-cad imo. Faster, more expressive, more aligned with how traditional cad designers work
Start with tinkercad. Upgrade to fusion 360. For sculpting , blender.
To use blender you need a high end PC. Like a gaming PC.
Fusion and blender are both incredibly complex softwares that do a lot of things and take a lot of invested time to learn but there are tons of tutorial videos and online communities for both.
You don’t need a powerful computer for blender unless you’re doing rendering or sculping or working with really high poly models. Especially when compared to proper CAD packages. I do a lot of design work in blender and my computer is so unstressed by it I can hear the CPU chirping when I rotate the viewport.
It’s worth learning the basics of a parametric CAD but blender will do virtually everything faster and give you greater freedom and control over the exact geometry it outputs.
For a step between Tinkercad and Fusion 360, you can check out MatterControl.
It is like Tinkercad but way more options and runs locally. Works great for more artistic shapes that are hard in CAD software.
Copied this from a similar question I responded to a while back: I have been using Sketchup 2017 (whatever the last free version was they released) for years to make 3D models for all kinds of purposes, incl 3D printing. For my brain it has proven to be the most intuitive tool to learn, it’s been a really long time so maybe I have forgotten but I feel like the barrier to entry was pretty small. There is a lot of content out there from people giving tips and tutorials. There are plug-ins still flooding around that have really good functionality. I use it with a Connexion 3D Space Navigator mouse that’s prob 10+ years old. That’s been a godsend and adds so much efficiency and flow to the tool.
I don’t know if you can still download it from Trimble but there are sources for it elsewhere.
Have fun, whatever you choose.
Funny enough I actually used SketchUp a bunch in the past for interior decoration. I would create realistic renders of rooms in our house in Sweet Home 3D and I used SketchUp to create all of the funiture, etc. I heard it wasn’t that great for 3d printing which is why I am inquiring if there is something better but if I don’t find anything I like maybe I’ll just stick with SketchUp lol.
Oh that is funny. I’ve had no issues with it, that said, I was content to use a website to convert my .skp files into .stl so I could print but that was less annoying than the learning curve of new software. I tried all the free/OS ones people tend to mention and maybe I’m just an old grump now, but they frustrated me more than just being able to make the thing I’m trying to make and spend no more than 1-2 minutes getting the file uploaded, converted and saved ready to go.
Keen to hear if you find a good solution given we have the same foundation tool. I’d be willing to try a recommendation from someone in the same boat.
FreeCAD
Looks like there is a consensus with FreeCAD so I will give that a try later today. Thank you!
@idunnololz Freecad forever imho but take a look to onshape(.com) powerful webapp.
Lots of people use fusion360. It has a free license for hobbyists. Although it is a cloud-first software. There is always the risk of them canceling that free license.
But I have yet to find a good enough replacement…
That depends entirely on what you want to print/design.
If it’s organic forms (Think characters, decorative objects, etc) then something like Blender would suit your need.
if you want to go more technical (machines, precision parts) then you’d use one of the various CAD tools, e.g. FreeCAD, TinkerCad or Fusion360
You’ll want to double check me but I think Fusion360 still has a free version buried somewhere on their site. I know last time I opened mine it was working but I thought I’d read something about it going away.
I will mostly be printing functional parts. Eg. mounts, furniture accessories etc.
I mostly use Blender. Sometimes I use FreeCAD instead.
I tend to open TinkerCAD to make simple things quickly. It’s web based so works on Mac/PC and free.
Solid works, a premium software package, has a cheap license for vets. Its the same as a student license.
Only drawback is the files will contaminate a professional love cense database. The meta data will copy the student license onto any assembly made with the student part even if the full professional license has been paid.
Not something in have to worry about
Personally I use Blender, because I used it in uni for gamedev 3d modelling. It’s a bit finnicky to be honest, but not as bad as freecad. There is also a plugin which introduces CAD like workflows to blender if that is important to you. https://www.cadsketcher.com/
FreeCAD is insane. It is absolutelty unworkable and unintuitive for me.
OpenSCAD is very cool for certain projects.
I’ve been wanting to try out https://github.com/cryinkfly/Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-Linux
FreeCAD is insane. It is absolutelty unworkable and unintuitive for me.
I find it pretty workable for most of my cases, but have to look up how to solve certain things. I am doing fairly simple stuff though, and I don’t have any other references except some SolidWorks back in high school ages ago. But it gets me fairly easily to where I want to be, and it is FOSS which is important to me - I don’t want to lock my workflow into a software suite that may do a major rugpull at any given moment. I have experienced that before.
I didn’t start using it until after the 1.0 release - apparently there were some major improvements to the usability with that release. Did you try it after?
Did you try it after?
yep, I tried it fairly recently.
I agree with you on a philosophical level. But ignoring that, if it’s only about prpductivity shaper or fusion are way ahead compared to open source. I’d say you can work at least twice as fast in those.
And freecad slows me down way too much because of how unintuitive it is for me. If I only restrict myself to open source, blender has a way better UX.
Freecad is pretty good, but unfortunately there’s no foss cad software that’s better. If you don’t care about foss, I would recommend onshape if you’re fine with the “public by default” thing, else fusion360.
For art, blender is great. Plasticity seems neat too, it’s a more traditional software licensing model (pay per version I think, not cheap not insanely expensive)
My summary of MCAD suites is getting pretty long in the tooth these days, and IIRC one or two of the niche ones are simply not available anymore, but it still might be useful.
For what it’s worth, I use Alibre Design in Windows, and do STEP touchups and smaller projects in Linux (where I spend most of my time) on FreeCAD. I just really like the timeline and workflow in Alibre, and it very rarely crashes.
