I am a hobbyist / maker / artist, with a professionnal electronic and software engineering background. That to say I know hardly anything about 3d models design… for now.
I have been playing with my new Zortrax for a few days now (mostly printing other’s STL files…) but now I would like to start designing my own (or at least for the beginning, modifying other’s to adjust to my needs…)
I find quite difficult to pick a software among all what is available, so I would be happy to hear about your advices !
I am looking for a software with the following features, if that exists :
Well… Free (at least for now. If I suceed in using a demo software and the full version is affordable, why not !)
With some available online tutorial (really for beginner)
Needs to design mechanical parts (things like that :
As simple as possible
Working under a windows (8.1) workstation, and must be able to work without an internet connexion at least some of the time (offline)
For now I have installed DesignSpark Mechanical (seems quite good, but not popular ?) and Blender (looks like a pain to master and not sure how to respect mechanical quotes). I can try anything else, but since I want to invest a lot of time learning it, I would like to pick a good choice from the beginning…
I was also looking for something to do mechanical type parts instead of art type objects.
I still have a lot to learn, but I am beginning to like OpenSCAD. It is based on programming instead of drawing.
I like the fact you can design a module, then just use it over and over. Really easy to scale things. And it is free. The first time I looked at it, I couldn’t figure it out, then watched a couple of tutorial videos on youtube and it all made sense. But, if you like drawing things it would probably not be the best.
I am using it on Windows 8.1 (but not workstation) and a mac. I don’t think it requires internet connection once you install it.
You may want to use DesignSpark Mechanical, it’s free, easy to use, exports to STL format and is derived from SpaceClaim software, which is a powerful mechanical engineering CAD tool.
[quote name=f1iqf]Thank you dgtaylor45 ! This sounds like a good software to create something for a programmer like me; I’m going to try it.
However, it may not be possible with it to reuse an existing .stl file for modification (but it may be easier anyway to recreate it from scratch).
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Use the import function to reuse .stl models.
I use OpenScad a lot but mainly through JavaScad. Its a javawrapper which generates openscad but is much cleaner to use. Complex calculation is much simpler using JavaScad. But OK mastering Java can be a bridge to far for most. I would not suggest using JavaScad without prior Java knowledge.
Well when I started a few years ago, I looked at free cad software (including FreeCAD), but did not get on with them.
I have tried BobCaD, there sales people,are a pain!
I have tried dolphin cad, but did not get on with it.
I have been using Alibre Design (now called Geomagic Design) for a long time and liked it (I believe they have a cheaper hobbyist version). I have recently started using Autodesk Inventor LT and like it and there is certainly more training available for it. Until I upgrade to Inventor Pro (which is a lot of money) I still use Alibre to do any part assembly.
I really like parametric cad packages like Alibre and Inventor and once you learn them they are pretty intuitive to use (at least for me).
[quote name=ACC]You may want to use DesignSpark Mechanical, it’s free, easy to use, exports to STL format and is derived from SpaceClaim software, which is a powerful mechanical engineering CAD tool.
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I just downloaded Designspark Mechanical… I have used Spaceclaim. It is the spitting image of it.(minus a few things) Great software!!! Probably the best free one out there.(In my opinion) Thanks for pointing that one out!! Never knew about it.
Most solid surface modelling apps cannot directly do boolean operations on imported meshes. E.g. Rhino 3d needs to convert the medh to a NURBS object (MeshToNURBS command) before
The only ones that I would spend brain cells learning that are free are:
Design Spark Mechanical
Fusion 360
OnShape
Out of those I am not sure which one to have you try first. DesignSpark is radical and not like anything else. That may be good or bad. It seems to have found a niche market with people who get un-editable files like STLs and STEP or IGES and it edits them. That is good for mold-makers who need to make some changes to a file that was not meant to be changed. Personally I would say skip that and look at Fusion360 and OnShape.
Fusion360 is a lot more mature, but OnShape should grow fast. Fusion360 is missing to advanced drawing (not modeling) features, but that will not make any difference to you at this level.
Probably Fusion360 for the win, while keeping an eye on OnShape.
There is this online viewer / editor for OpenSCAD and OpenJSCAD : http://openjscad.org/
I just discovered it. I feel like I will take time someday to learn it.
I began by using Maya to do my modeling. Really not the best tool for that, it's aimed at the movie/game industry but it can do almost everything and as a nice object construction history to adjust stuff, dimensions, etc.
Now I'm using / learning Rhinoceros (free on Mac for now) and OnShape, but I can't yet manage to do all my needs on onShape...
What I really like with it though is fixing and changing dimensions in sketches, so I can adjust models easily at the end. They become parametric.
That's the main thing missing from Rhino, unless I'm not aware of that yet (beside a plugin currently not supported on mac).
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