What is the group’s consensus on using Geomagic Design Expert for creating parts that will be 3D printed? The software can generate STL files, which seems to be the format of choice for 3D printing, so that seems promising.
I’m just in the process of considering a 3D printer to supplement my metal working hobby shop. I’ve been using GDE for years to design parts for subtractive machining so am familiar with it. MOI can be added to the package - would something like that be definitely necessary or just something that would be nice to have?
I have recently upgraded to GDE 2014 from Alibre PE 2012. Its great cad with a solidworks type feature tree design flow. The stl files are very clean and I’ve never had to do any fixups before slicing.
Thanks Woody. I’ve been using Alibre (now GeoMagic) Expert for about 10 years now so it’s good to here that it will at least get me started. All the talk of products like Blender were making me think that some other software might be needed so I’m glad to hear that is not the case.
Mike
er - Thanks Woofy! Sorry for the typo on you screen name.
You should check out Designspark mechanical too. Free. It is a scaled down version of Spaceclaim. I would say best free, most powerful free software out there.
This is a copy of a post I made in another forum recently, but its relevant here.
I’ve been using Alibre 2012 PE for well over a year now. However I recently took a look at SpaceClaim in its stripware version (DesignSpark). I only spent an afternoon with it but I have to say I completely missed the point. The videos’s of push/pull modeling look fantastic, but when I tried to produce a simple engineering part with it I struggled badly. Getting the rough shape is very easy but tying it down with dimensions was impossible. Sure you can set dimensions ok but with out constraints its all lost the moment a wall is pushed. I guess I am imposing my parametric constraint driven methods onto a program that doesn’t have them. I just don’t see the equivalent in DesignSpark though. I can see that layers go some way towards this but within a layer nothing holds any relationship.
So does anyone used SpaceClaim for engineering parts, because I’ve definitely missed the point? For me, I need the feature tree/history style used by Alibre/Geomagic…
I know a lot of people like designspark/spaceclaim, and I’ve seen some impressive designs done with it. It’s hard to deny designsparks value for money as well.
When I checked it out I did not see any way to parametise a design. For example, I have designed a spur gear with a module of 1.2 and later decide to change it to 1.5. Is that possible in designspark? With a parametric driven design its just a matter of changing the module value.
