3DPrinting

17325 readers

70 users here now

3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or [email protected]

There are CAD communities available at: [email protected] or [email protected]

Rules

No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
Do not create links to reddit
If you see an issue please flag it
No guns
No injury gore posts

If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![]()

Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

109

I liked Fusion 360, I like Onshape - but I'd rather like something that I won't lose over the whims of one company. So, what? (feddit.org)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

62 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I am not a design draftsman, I'm not an engineer. My workflow is usually: I put something on the scanner, load the calibrated scan, trace the outline, throw a few sketches on various planes in there, round a few edges, print it and I'm done.

Fusion 360 scratches that itch very well but requires me to keep a Windows VM and also their free model felt more and more unusable. OnShape is a nice substitute that works fine for me, but I don't like the "free or 1500€/year" approach. Without a middle ground subscription for makers it feels that I could lose anything the second their energy prices for servers go up or something.

The list of CAD software is exhaustive, so I am looking for recommendations that fit my "eh, click, click, click, good enough" workflow. FreeCAD is way too unintiuitive for that. I have tried getting into it, but 3D printing is a tool for me and the learning curve quickly made using it another hobby.

So. Suggestions welcome. Scalding criticism about my lack of enthusiasm and consumer mentality not so much, but I guess that comes bundled with useful advice, so, eh, I'll take it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

I only use pretty basic modelling, and have no interest in advanced CAD featueres, I've tried both the link branch and ondsel, and I honesty think they're about the same level as regular freecad. None of them are even near as intuitive to use as for example onshape, they're actually a bit of a chore to use IME.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Yeah they are a bit of a pain to use, but still better than having your files taken hostage by autodesk or onshape

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You don’t even have to touch any “advanced” modeling features for FreeCAD to be useful. I primarily use extrudes and revolves of sketches in the Part Design workbench. The workflow is exactly the same as what I do at work every day in SolidWorks.

FreeCAD doesn’t let you be as loosey-goosey with geometry as some commercial software. That’s because they don’t have an army of developers paid to work on “nicety” features like that.

I can break SolidWorks models the same way that I can break FreeCAD models. No CAD software is immune to this. Some fail more gracefully than others. It doesn’t mean it’s unusable. You should have seen the repairs I had to make to a SolidWorks model today because I needed to convert a generic extruded feature into a sheetmetal feature…. It took a few minutes, but it’s no different than fixing things in FreeCAD because you changed the design.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I don't want to spend hours just getting to know how to use the software for my basic needs. FreeCAD is (or was when I tried 8 months ago) not intuitive enough for me, so I moved to something that allowed for easier simple modelling. 3D modelling is not what I enjoy, I just need it done so I can do the stuff I actually enjoy. It's a tool I want to spend as little time as possible with.