What Softwares are you Using?

I may be one of the lucky ones fortunate enough to have access to some of the most powerful softwares: Geomagic Studio, SpaceClaim, Spark, XOR, Design X ETC. What do you use? Is it a money limitation or are there softwares you prefer as opposed to the programs I mentioned?

-Mike

Solidworks.

Im a Mechanical engineer. So its pretty much the standard. (Together with Solid Edge, Inventor and CATIA)

SolidWorks here as well, via work.

FreeCAD, and the #1 reason... It runs on Linux! (and I will not ever give even one rusty penny to micro$oft)

The other few solid molders that run on Linux have a UI that just flat out sucks rocks. For designing parts to be printed and all around work at home, I haven't found anything I cant do with FreeCAD. And you really can't beat the price.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2014 02:14AM by markstephen.

Same as markstephen, I use FreeCAD because I run Ubuntu at home.

One the one hand I support this open source project (I contribute to it in a few ways), and on the other hand it is my way of expressing my disgust at the unethical practices by the commercial software industry.

Just a couple examples: forced annual maintenance or you won't get bug fixes, no backward compatibility... and now the cloud they'll soon force down our throat which will make the software more expensive.

At work we may have no choice but to use these software solutions, but at home I do.

Anyway, FreeCAD is obviously very far from a real alternative to the big boys, but for personal use it's plenty powerful enough. The development team is small (handful of guys working on it in their spare time) but they manage to improve the software every year.

Sketchup Pro 8 for design + Sketchy Physics for animating parts (eg robot legs) and detecting potential problems with movement
Using the STL exporter plugin for SU as well

netfabb Basic 5.1 for automating repairs of STL files (sketchup won't alert to holes)

Slic3r and Pronterface for gcode generation and final printing.

I am new to this and wanted to try out if i can manage the software before i get my printer.
i worked with sketchup and a lot of 3d map editors for games before.
i do not want to spend too much on the software, so

can you recommend something for me?
openSCAD is a bit too much "type in what you want"ish for me
is there any GUI Oriented (maybe free) 3D Software out there,
where i can build my 3d print fast and easy?

thanks

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Fleder
I am new to this and wanted to try out if i can manage the software before i get my printer.
i worked with sketchup and a lot of 3d map editors for games before.
i do not want to spend too much on the software, so

can you recommend something for me?
openSCAD is a bit too much "type in what you want"ish for me
is there any GUI Oriented (maybe free) 3D Software out there,
where i can build my 3d print fast and easy?

thanks

You can always get your software by other means.

I reccomend Inventor if you are a beginner. It is one of the easiest professional CAD programs to get into.

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Crewmember
You can always get your software by other means.

I reccomend Inventor if you are a beginner. It is one of the easiest professional CAD programs to get into.

9.200 € or 120 monthly...
Wow, that is a lot of money.

I would like to aquire a Serial, because i would like to build some kind of board game i maybe want to sell afterwards.

Is there any other beginner friendly 3D CAD programm that would not cost me as much as a car?

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Fleder

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Crewmember
You can always get your software by other means.

I reccomend Inventor if you are a beginner. It is one of the easiest professional CAD programs to get into.

9.200 € or 120 monthly...
Wow, that is a lot of money.

I would like to aquire a Serial, because i would like to build some kind of board game i maybe want to sell afterwards.

Is there any other beginner friendly 3D CAD programm that would not cost me as much as a car?

Hi Fleder,

You can always try FreeCAD. While it has a bit more of a learning curve than say sketchup, it is not that much harder to learn and with an hour or two watching and following along with a few video tutorials will have you making real parts. It supports .stl format and has a meshing workbench that will produce a very refined mesh, which means your arcs and circles come out looking like arcs and circles and not polygons. FreeCAD also has an active forum where you can get your questions answered. If you decide to give FreeCAD a try, I can not recommend strong enough that you get the latest development version available for your OS. FreeCAD is the best and about the only GUI based 3D solid parametric CAD program out there in the FOSS arena.

No, it's not SolidWorks, but it is worth a lot more than you pay for it, it will run on Linux, Mac and that other OS, and IMO, for home 3D printing, you just can't beat it for the price. You can find it at [www.freecadweb.org]

There is even a script that you can copy and install that will automatically export your 3D part directly to your slicing software with a single mouse click, and a work in progress for a FreeCAD GUI that works with Cura engine.

Mark

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markstephen
Hi Fleder,

You can always try FreeCAD. While it has a bit more of a learning curve than say sketchup, it is not that much harder to learn and with an hour or two watching and following along with a few video tutorials will have you making real parts. It supports .stl format and has a meshing workbench that will produce a very refined mesh, which means your arcs and circles come out looking like arcs and circles and not polygons. FreeCAD also has an active forum where you can get your questions answered. If you decide to give FreeCAD a try, I can not recommend strong enough that you get the latest development version available for your OS. FreeCAD is the best and about the only GUI based 3D solid parametric CAD program out there in the FOSS arena.

No, it's not SolidWorks, but it is worth a lot more than you pay for it, it will run on Linux, Mac and that other OS, and IMO, for home 3D printing, you just can't beat it for the price. You can find it at [www.freecadweb.org]

There is even a script that you can copy and install that will automatically export your 3D part directly to your slicing software with a single mouse click, and a work in progress for a FreeCAD GUI that works with Cura engine.

Mark

Hi Mark,

that sounds great, i will try it right now!
Thank you kindly!

---

Gruß Daniel

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markstephen
FreeCAD is the best and about the only GUI based 3D solid parametric CAD program out there in the FOSS arena.

Actually there's another FOSS project with the same goal, NaroCAD. But it was started years later than FreeCAD, so it's not as far ahead, there are not as many developers working on it AFAIK, but the real nail on the coffin: it's based on the .NET framework. In other words, only available on "that other OS".

It's a pity HeeksCAD is for all intent and purpose dead, it had a different approach than FreeCAD, not as complete on the CAD side, but a little easier to work with, with some limited "push-pull" capacity.

Does someone know how to cut objects in half in FreeCAD?
I can't get it to do this

like indicated here with red lines:

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Gruß Daniel

Suggest you try asking in the FreeCAD forum see FreeCAD Help Forum

Don't forget to post your FreeCAD info

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Fleder
Does someone know how to cut objects in half in FreeCAD?
I can't get it to do this

There are several ways to get the part your looking for. KeithSloan gives pretty good advice there. The FreeCAD forum is the best place to get answers for this type of in depth technical question. The forum is set up to accept your your FreeCAD file attachments so you do not need to zip them. When you sign up, your first post is moderated to help filter out spammers. Before you make your first post, please read the very first topic in the help forum titled "IMPORTANT: Please read first before asking for help", and attach your file that you have questions about.

I'll be watching for your post.

Mark

thank you,

i think it is better to use the freecad forum then

---

Gruß Daniel

I am the odd man out. I use 3ds Max. I would use blender, but I have knowledge of 3ds Max and therefore feel comfortable with the GUI and such. If I need to do any planning, it is wither paper, or AutoCAD.

I have been working on learning OpenSCAD, but I dislike the feel of being back in the 80's learning computer graphics programming.

SolidWorks + Solid Edge

I use autodesk fusion 360, (free for non-commercial)

I have been using Inventor Fusion for over a year, but I recently switched to Fusion 360. It's much more powerful

All these people using SolidWorks and Inventor for free. Sometimes I wish I weren't so honest. I'm trying to use Blender and Autodesk 123D Design, but more often find myself using Meshmixer and Wings3D, because they're so lightweight and easy to just pop open and mess around with on my laptop.

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Feign
All these people using SolidWorks and Inventor for free. Sometimes I wish I weren't so honest. I'm trying to use Blender and Autodesk 123D Design, but more often find myself using Meshmixer and Wings3D, because they're so lightweight and easy to just pop open and mess around with on my laptop.

Blender isn't IDEAL, but it is free.
There is a tutorial series that takes you through the building of a bearing here;
[rab3d.com]

There is also the Designspark Mechanical software which is pretty decent. I just started to mess with it this past week.

Thanks RegB... Man, that was a great tutorial, but it looks like modelling mechanical things in Blender is like trying to make slide presentations in Photoshop.

Basically, it reinforced my decision to stick with 123D Design for the mechanical stuff. I also have Designspark Mechanical and Sketchup, but haven't used either of them at all. How do they compare to 123D Design? (I don't need to know how they compare to Wings3D... I already know Wings is about as powerful as MSPaint.)

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Feign
Thanks RegB... Man, that was a great tutorial, but it looks like modelling mechanical things in Blender is like trying to make slide presentations in Photoshop.

Basically, it reinforced my decision to stick with 123D Design for the mechanical stuff. I also have Designspark Mechanical and Sketchup, but haven't used either of them at all. How do they compare to 123D Design? (I don't need to know how they compare to Wings3D... I already know Wings is about as powerful as MSPaint.)

I stated before that I use 3ds Max for just about everything. I am playing around with DesignSpark to have a different tool that should have less overhead to it than 3ds Max, since my laptop is underpowered . Poking around with the 123D Design web app, and judging only from that, I actually like the DesignSpark better. The interface is nicer imho. There are a few tutorials on YouTube that can ease the learning a tad, but most of them either fly through the material, or have no narration at all. So it will be a small patience test.

With all of that stated, I was able to quickly model a few useful things in DesignSpark Mechanical with little difficulty. It doesn't hurt that it is really a lighter version of SpaceClaim

Blender is aimed at Industrial Engineers while Autodesk 123D is very basic and a pain to use. I'm a mechanical engineer so I primarily use Solidworks. 3DS Max is not an engineering design package. It's better for more organic, artistic modeling.

Your best bet is to pretend to be a student at a college somewhere (no one is checking) and sign up an Autodesk student account. They let you use all their professional software for free. They are monitoring you so obviously if you are running the software all day, they are going to know you aren't a student. [www.autodesk.com]
Inventor is close enough to Solidworks. 3DS Max is way easier than Maya. Stay away from AutoCAD.

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Feign
All these people using SolidWorks and Inventor for free. Sometimes I wish I weren't so honest. I'm trying to use Blender and Autodesk 123D Design, but more often find myself using Meshmixer and Wings3D, because they're so lightweight and easy to just pop open and mess around with on my laptop.

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JerseyGirl
Blender is aimed at Industrial Engineers

The fact you wrote that makes me think you haven't even visited Blender's website once.

It is NOT aimed at industrial engineers. It's a mesh modeler which may have a different approach and UI compared to 3DS Max, but mostly answers to the same needs.

You're right, I just blanked out there and switched up Blender and Rhino. I was thinking of Rhino. Rhino is a cheap CAD package out there. It seems to be into surface modeling.

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NormandC

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JerseyGirl
Blender is aimed at Industrial Engineers

The fact you wrote that makes me think you haven't even visited Blender's website once.

It is NOT aimed at industrial engineers. It's a mesh modeler which may have a different approach and UI compared to 3DS Max, but mostly answers to the same needs.

IronCAD. Netfabb. MeshLab. OpenSCAD.

FreeCad: If you know what you are doing, I mean if you have measured a pieace and you have blueprints, or you have the original broken piece in your hand.
Blender: If you are planning something, but you don't really know how to do it.

Yes, Blender is not a CAD software, it's a organic one, but it's easy to cut some part of the 3D model, redone from scractch, assamble parts together, etc.