Hello 3d printing community! I’m a complete newb and I am planning on doing a lot of 3d printing in the coming months.
I wanted to get into 3d printing with the intention of designing a lot of models and printing them for use around the house. So, I wanted to ask what people typically use for designing their own models to print?
Ideally the software would support both Windows and Mac as that’s what I typically use these days. Let me know, thanks!
Update
First of all, thank you everyone for weighing in here!
Set aside some time last night and played with both Fusion 360 and FreeCAD since those two software kept popping up in the answers. My initial impressions of Fusion 360 was not great. I’m not sure if it’s just the Mac version but the software was a bit laggy and at the end of my session it froze. Otherwise it worked fine and I was able to make a prototype with it and I would have finished it if the program didn’t freeze.
Next I tried FreeCAD. I think the UX is definitely worse than Fusion 360, however I will say it was fast and I did not notice any lag. I admit that my initial impression of it was not good. The second I opened a fresh install of FreeCAD it was already erroring. I watched some tutorials. It definitely suffered from the issue some issues pointed out in the comments where the program has a ton of tutorials but none are really for the latest version so you kind of have to figure out the “modern way” to achieve what the tutorial is telling you to do. It also seems to have some weird bugs. I ran into one where sometimes I had to repeat an action for it to work. No idea why. Otherwise I was able to design a decently complicated prototype in it. I could see myself using it long term for sure.
I saw some programs mentioned where you would basically create models by writing code. If I have time, I will try some of those next. I’m not that into programming though /s.
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I’ve been down this rabbit hole and have some thoughts. Personally I’ve been trying to stick to Linux which makes things harder but since you have Mac and/or Windows, you have more options.
First, my main app I use (and why my laptop is still dual boot) is Fusion 360. I have a hobbyist license so it’s free with some limitation that don’t really matter. It doesn’t work great on linux (I’ve gotten it to run with WINE but it seems to crash and not run great) so I’ve been looking at alternatives. However, it works great and will do pretty much whatever you want. Also works well with CNC if you want to branch out into that.
Lately I’ve started looking at https://www.onshape.com/en/ as it’s all browser based. The free version means nothing is private but because it’s browser based, it works with Linux. I’ve just played around with it once but it looks promising.
I really want to like FreeCAD but it’s been confusing to me when I’ve tried to use it in the past. I think I just need to sit down and watch a view videos and read the docs to learn it. I’ve heard good things about it after it hit 1.0 so maybe I need to revisit it. I feel like this will be best to learn long term.
https://openscad.org/ isn’t your standard CAD program but it can be really powerful. I’ve used it a few times but you need to think of your models programmatically and I’ve found this to be difficult for some applications. It’s really cool though and worth checking out.
I’ve found TinkerCAD to be ok for simple things but it seems a bit simplistic for the things I’ve been trying to do.
Another consideration… If you are a programmer type then OpenSCAD is a language-based program. I’ve been using it heavily for the past week designing a dual-filament extruder for my Ender 3, and last year I designed and built a utility trailer. As with anything it has its quirks, but I’m much more comfortable writing code and I always found the other GUI-oriented programs to be unintuitive.
Also Build123d, which does BREP instead of only meshes. https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
I really like Build123d. I hope someday the model sites like Printables and Makerworld support it like they do OpenSCAD.
build123d is vastly superior code-cad imo. Faster, more expressive, more aligned with how traditional cad designers work
Not to be a stereotypically insufferable Stallman style neckbeard about it, but the only two objectively correct answers to this question are FreeCAD for mechanical parametric things, and Blender for organic shapes or decorative models. (You can also bully Blender into doing parametric CAD work with plugins. And I guess OpenSCAD also counts, if you would rather program your models rather than model your models.)
All of the other available commercial options are some combination of:
- Proprietary vendor lock-in bullshit
- Subscription model “software as a service” perpetual money sinks
- Always online cloud services that either steal your models/make them available to anyone/probably also report you to the Feds
- Loaded with quasi-legal licensing restrictions that prevent you from distributing or selling your own creations made with it
Or for extra bonus points, all of the above!
FreeCAD isn’t exactly slick and it has a rather precipitous learning curve, but it’s also basically the only viable truly free option that won’t spy on you, steal your stuff, or turn you upside down and shake you for money on a monthly basis.
Hey, OpenSCAD is the best! Also Shapelab seems like it might be interesting (sculpt in VR), though I haven’t yet tried it.
My summary of MCAD suites is getting pretty long in the tooth these days, and IIRC one or two of the niche ones are simply not available anymore, but it still might be useful.
For what it’s worth, I use Alibre Design in Windows, and do STEP touchups and smaller projects in Linux (where I spend most of my time) on FreeCAD. I just really like the timeline and workflow in Alibre, and it very rarely crashes.
I have to throw a vote in for Blender. It’s certainly not the best tool for precise CAD work, but for those who are already familiar with using Blender, you can create excellent models for 3D printing, even without plugins. I also love the fact that you can animate, shade, and render your models for presentations or documentation all in the same program. Yeah sure, some of the other programs have a similar capability when you install their add-ons and such, but Blender is free and doesn’t force you into any eco system. And seriously, it’s honestly crazy that Blender is free for how good it is.
I already knew my way around blender before I got into 3D printing, so I used that ever since. It’s ok. It’s certainly no CAD tool. Parameterization would be great and if you use a fair bit of boolean modifiers without applying them (so you can edit parts later on) it does get laggy.
If you already know Blender it’s a decent choice to cut down on learning time, but if not I would not recommend it.
I used OpenSCAD quite a bit as well, which is the polar opposite of Blender. It’s perfect for parametrization and editing stuff later into the project is super easy, but the handling is really bad, even as a software developer.
The language has some evil quirks, like e.g. that the resolution of curved shapes isn’t a parameter of the function used to create the shape, but instead it uses a global variable. It clearly looks like a language designed by mathematicians.
@squaresinger @Snafucode In OpenSCAD you can pass the resolution variables as arguments to the function, so it’s not quite as bad as you are implying. See eg https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD/_User/_Manual/Primitive/_Solids#sphere
Yeah I mostly stuck with Blender because I didn’t want to tackle a whole new program at the time, and it has fit my needs pretty well since. But I do agree that you are better off with a real CAD program for most things, especially if you are starting from scratch. I haven’t used OpenSCAD much, but it will probably be one of my choices if I need to do more precise/portable work.
