Just want to thank everyone that engaged with my post today everyone was so chill and inspiring. I want to encourage us all in this community and all over Lemmy to continue to be kind and helpful. I had so many bad experiences on Reddit with hate keepers and know it alls and I’m glad we got this opportunity to be something better.
Ps: what cad software did you start on and what do you use now? Any tips and tricks will be greatly appreciated!
If you code at all OpenSCAD
If you’ve never done modeling at all TinkerCAD
If you want the easiest experience Fusion360
If you live the FOSS doctrine – FreeCAD
It’s possible that I’m not familiar enough with it, but in my experience OpenSCAD makes the vast majority of projects take way longer compared to non-scripting-based CAD software. I learned Onshape for a class and haven’t used OSCAD since. (though it definitely still has some niche uses)
If you’re new to 3d design I usually recommend starting with Tinkercad. I moved from there to Fusion 360. Fusion is a huge pain in the butt if you don’t want to way them large sums of money, but it’s the cad software I most enjoy.
Step 1. Start with TinkerCAD
Step 2. Graduate to Fusion 360
Step 3. Go back to TinkerCAD because F360 was difficult
Final Step. Read other people’s comments about moving to Fusion 360 and cry a little
<wisdom sets in>: Perhaps I should learn this OpenSCAD thing or maybe FreeCAD. Then I would have all the fancy features and I’d never have to worry about paying for such software.
Actually, there exists no commercial equivalent to OpenSCAD that I’m aware of. Those doing generative design via code in industry are already using OpenSCAD or they’re using truly custom stuff.
Pro tip: Use the latest nightly build of OpenSCAD from their website and enable the new features that speed up rendering times by like 1000% 👍
For learning or use. Fusion 360 still offers a free version for home use. There are great tutorials on YouTube or buy a $30/month Udemy account and get access to tons of courses and everything else in their library and cancel when you’re done learning.
For Mac and Windows only, limited to 10 editable designs and 1 drawing at a time.
But you can save your files locally, and then delete them. The 10 file limit isn’t really a limit. It’s an annoyance.
The 10 file limit really isn’t that bad, I just set my files in Fusion 360 from “editable” to “read only” and it frees up more space.
Then if I need to edit an older one I just go in reverse.
And the 1 drawing at a time thing I didn’t know was a thing as I normally only have 1 open but there have been a couple times I’ve been working in more than 1.
First design was on freecad. The others on openscad.
lol hatekeepers. I’m going to use that – what an apt term
Fusion 360. Free for home use and it’s really not as bad as some people make it out to be. A little tricky to get the hang of first but there are thousands of tutorials out there.
I had absolutely zero 3d modeling experience prior to diving into fusion360 and I am still really new to it, but I’m quite enjoying it.
The tutorials for F360 are numerous, and some very good, you just have to find one that supports the current build. I still struggle with the invisible auto constraints it inexplicably adds and the apparent inability to modify constraint hierarchy (I had a couple thousand hours of Pro/E back in the day), and I throw things when they don’t have all the mathematical ways to create construction objects. Aside from that it’s a good tool as long as you’re working with solid objects and not meshes.
