New Guy looking for 3D design software recommendations

Hi, new to 3D printing. My wife bought me a flash forge creator pro printer for our anniversary since I have been saying I'd like to get one for the past year or so. And well with that I'm looking to find a good 3D design software program to design some projects. I have been working some with tinker cad and it's ok, but I'm looking for something more. I downloaded the trial of Sketchup but the I couldn't even figure out how to lay a mm grid down or input dimensions for non associated shapes. And I searched the topics for a couple hours before giving up on it. I would like something like Fusion 360, but with maybe a one time cost.

I would also be interested in slicer recommendations as well. However from what I have read the Simplify 3D seems to be the top dog and I'm fairly certain that's probably the way I'll go.

But thanks for any help you can give me and I hope to not be to annoying as a newb to 3D printing.

openscad

Different approach and - for me - a much easier to use one.

If you're going to use it for 3d printing then AUtodesk Fusion 360 is really great as it contains a traditional volumetric CAD and also a modeler in which you can design organic shapes, all that integrated into one nice package.

You can also import stl files and design around them. Of course you can export to stl.

Free for students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and startups

I've been using it for 3 years now, really a great tool, easy to learn, very intuitive.

http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/try-buy

bear in mind that fusion 360 is for 64 bit versions of windows only.

I prefer 32 bit - so wouldn't let me download it.
Figured I might give it ago before throwing my hands up and screaming and going back to openscad :-)

But won't let me anyway.

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Originally Posted by Hugues

If you're going to use it for 3d printing then AUtodesk Fusion 360 is really great as it contains a traditional volumetric CAD and also a modeler in which you can design organic shapes, all that integrated into one nice package.

You can also import stl files and design around them. Of course you can export to stl.

Free for students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and startups

I've been using it for 3 years now, really a great tool, easy to learn, very intuitive.

http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/try-buy

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I've used it before and I really like fusion 360, however I assumed it wasn't free for anything other than students & educators as that's all I've found on their site. I've been looking around their site and still can't find anything that says different. But I emailed them to see if I can get it free for enthusiasts/Hobbyists. I have heard that before from some utube people I follow, but never checked into it until a couple days ago. I will try openscad for sure just to check it out, never rule anything out until I try it.

And there's other OS's than 64 bit?!?! :)

The link I gave above says:

Free for students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and startups

You don't see the same page as I do?
Attachment 9513

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Originally Posted by Hugues

The link I gave above says:

Free for students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and startups

You don't see the same page as I do?
Attachment 9513

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I don't know why I never noticed it, on the main page it says students & educators. And I've been on that page before and just didn't see it or it just didn't click. Well got egg on my face for that.

basically it's free if you tell them who you are :-)

Use Blender if you want a good mix of everything. Openscad is great if you're a math's nerd, I'm not so I prefer the visual approach. Blender is awesome and does everything from raw mesh editing down to literal vertex points, all the way up to sculpting your finished model.

It also has a 3D printing plugin that fixes meshes and detects overhang angles etc. It's pretty much all in one now.

lol I actually also prefer the visual approach. But lacking artistic ability, I struggle with drawing programs.

Openscad lets you see exactly what you want. I do a fair bit of lining up and moving stuff around by eye.

As for the maths side. if you can do basic arithmetic, you're covered.

The openscad manual really doesn't help. makes it sound infinitely more complicated than it actually is.

It's probably not very well suited to producing artistic models. But for practical things, it's pretty hard to beat.

But to be fair, from personal experience with both, Blender will take much more time to reach a basic level, compared to AD Fusion 360.

+1 For Fusion360. It's mind blowing that a program with so much power is free for makers/enthusiast.

I recommend Blender which is free..

I hear Fusion360 is good but still in a different class than professional CAD systems.

Given it has a 90-day free trial period and not prohibitively high price, I recommend Rhinoceros if you want to get involved in serious 3d modeling. There is a free plugin, grasshopper, which lets you perform amazing math-driven operations on 3d models.

Has anyone here ever tried Spaceclaim ?
Only ever seen them at the tct show, it always looks good and I stand there and pretend I know what they're talking about :-)

But never heard of anyone not at the show actually using it.

I use SpaceClaim and it's awesome. Doesn't come cheap though like most higher end packages.

Blender is pretty lackluster for dimensional work.

Sketchup is wonderful if you have no idea what you are doing, but you have to make sure your geometry is proper. I have years of practice with the software, but it only takes minutes to get the basics down.

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Originally Posted by ralphzoontjens

Given it has a 90-day free trial period and not prohibitively high price, I recommend Rhinoceros if you want to get involved in serious 3d modeling. There is a free plugin, grasshopper, which lets you perform amazing math-driven operations on 3d models.

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If we are going down the road of proproetry software and Rhino being mentioned then I think Moi3D needs to be thrown into the mix. Code is written by the same guy that wrote Rhino so there is a lot of overlap, it is very simple to use and costs only $295. I bought it and use it a lot, particularly when working with surfaces.

But does anyone who's not a commercial cad designer actually NEED commercial cad software, when there's so much around that's free ?

I'd say not.

Guess it really depends on what you're after. I work a lot with STL's, scan data and reverse engineering in a "CAD" environment. Free tools just can't pull that off.

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Originally Posted by Ama-fessional Molder

Blender is pretty lackluster for dimensional work.

Sketchup is wonderful if you have no idea what you are doing, but you have to make sure your geometry is proper. I have years of practice with the software, but it only takes minutes to get the basics down.

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Blender is perfectly fine for dimensional work, I'm not sure what part of that you missed. I've been using it for , well I forget now since it came out.. and it's metrics have always been spot on, especially when it comes to 3D printing. Like most Software you need to actually learn how to use it correctly. Many people get scared of it's interface, but it's fairly intuitive.

True but if you've ever used Solidworks, SpaceClaim, DesignSpark or even Sketchup, Blender is a joke for CAD at least in the mechanical sense. If you have the coin to spend SpaceClaim can't be beat. For free packages, DesignSpark is very very nice.

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

But does anyone who's not a commercial cad designer actually NEED commercial cad software, when there's so much around that's free ?

I'd say not.

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Maybe, maybe not.

As a professional design engineer I have had the pleasure of working with many different softwares over the years and every now and then I will try a free software, just for larks. Let me tell you, there is no comparison between free and paid-for. Yes, you can do basic designs with the free stuff but to really take your designs to the next level its worth it to spend a bit on software.

CA: you bought S3D, right? Why not just use the free slicers?

The free stuff I have played around with:
Blender
Sketchup
BRL-CAD
Creo Elements
FreeCAD
123D Design

Day to day I use Catia, Powershape, Geomagic Design and Moi3D. Even simple software like Moi3D blows the free stuff out of the water. And I don't get this culture of paying for a slicer but not for a modelling program. Its like playing a £10 guitar through a £1000 amp... makes no sense... :confused::rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Sebastian Finke

Maybe, maybe not.

As a professional design engineer I have had the pleasure of working with many different softwares over the years and every now and then I will try a free software, just for larks. Let me tell you, there is no comparison between free and paid-for. Yes, you can do basic designs with the free stuff but to really take your designs to the next level its worth it to spend a bit on software.

CA: you bought S3D, right? Why not just use the free slicers?

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that's easy - the only ones that work without any hassle on a replicator clone are makerware desktop, which I have a few major issues with and rep g - which, if it were a joke, would be in extremely bad taste.

The only off the shelf hassle free alternative to these two for a rep clone is simplify 3d.
Otherwise I'd be using cura. Which is very similiar to s3d, just doesn't do x3g files.

It wasn't a case of I prefer to pay for software - there wasn't any real alternative.

with cad packages - there is a LOT of realistic alternatives to commercial packages.