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Stepping up from Tinkercad but to what?

I visited a friend who is a professional medical engineer, and watched him work on a 3D design on some software paid for my the university they worked at. The options and features looked very practical!

Although I am not even close to working on so complicated projects, I did love the funtionalities. So now i have decided to put in the effort and learn a decent program, instead of using Tinkercad. I have been very happy with Tinkercad, but some things are only doable with workarounds or very creative methods.

The question is, what software should i start learning?

-FreeCAD
-Fusion 360
-AutoCAD
-Sketchup
-Blender
-LibreCAD
-Something else entirely?

41 comments
  • Okay so let's strike a couple out of that list:

    • LibreCAD is a 2D-only DXF editor. I think it's a fork of an old version of QCAD, which is also a 2D-only DXF editor. Not very helpful for 3D printing.
    • Sketchup is kinda useful for going "what would my room look like if I laid out the furniture like this?" It produces horrible 3D models. When I used to work at the job shop, I could tell the model had been designed in Sketchup because it had holes and reversed normals and other shit that wouldn't print.
    • Blender. Blender is a 3D sculpting and animation program; Be your own little Pixar, just add talent. It can be used to make models for 3D printing but it isn't very good as an engineering CAD package.

    I would also rule out AutoCAD because isn't it like, architectural software? And like, OLD? AutoDesk's engineering CAD was Inventor for the longest time, and they've been working on replacing Inventor with Fusion360. I'm personally done with AutoDesk, they've chafed my taint a few too many times so I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.

    OnShape is actually cool tech, but it's drawbackware. In the words of Lando Calrissian, this deal's getting worse all the time.

    I personally use FreeCAD, it could be better in a lot of ways but it's not commercial. It's made by the kind of people who are very good at programming computers, but they get full body diaper rash from cornhole to corneas if they try to think about software usability. It's why every concept is replicated 2-4 times in various forms of incompatibility. May the dread god Nyalathotep smite thee should thou chooseth to make a Clone instead of a Link. It's also developed in English by mostly non-English speakers. So you go to their forums and ask "If I need to make two mirror images of a part, what is the correct way to model the left one and then mirror it to get the right one" and they can't get past the grammatical puzzle you just spun for them to answer the technical question.

    In conclusion, learn to use a pencil.

  • I've used OpenSCAD, but I program, and it's aimed at someone who wants to write code to generate their objects.

  • Just mashing together shape primitives and Thingiverse parts in TinkerCAD is entirely underrated. It’s still primarily what I use unless I need particularly curvy corner.

    Fusion360 and FreeCAD are the CAD versions of Photoshop and GIMP (if Photoshop had a restricted free tier). They’re both trying to be a legit piece of CAD software, so there’s a bit of a learning curve coming from TinkerCAD. I found it easier to “feel my way around” Fusion360’s UI. FreeCAD has a layer of, “How did Open Source devs decide to be different here?” on top of learning something new.

  • I’ve tried Shapr3D and it seems pretty good. Not open-source though. I’ve heard blender is a really good option if you want that, but I’ve never tried it as I don’t really do much 3D modelling

  • There are two more alternatives, sadly for Windows only.

    • Solidedge Free for non-commercial makers, relatively easy to learn. But fucking expensive when you want to go commercial.
    • Solidworks Relatively cheap for makers and students,really expensive for commercial. The maker version has a reduced feature set,but that's not that relevant for most purposes (more towards simulation and things like that) Personally I would prefer it over Solidedge, but that's more of a personal view.

    BUT: Both are Windows only(more or less), and of course commercial.

    Sadly FreeCAD is not even close to most professional products - while it can be used for a lot of things,these things will take longer, be often more unstable and less "straightforward".Nevertheless for most non-professional uses,it will suffice.

    • Thanks for the tips!
      Can you explain examples of what FreeCAD is lacking at, compared to the pro software? I am not sure what I am going into, but would hate to limit myself or waste time/money just by making the wrong choice at this point

      • There are two sides of issues with FreeCAD: On one side it has usability issues. The comes largely from the "workbench" concept, so often you will be missing a tool unless you change workbenches which in terms leads to another tool missing. Furthermore the UI is not really consistent in how things are named, how things are done,etc. Same goes for the actual step of editing things. So while you eventually "get there", especially as a newcomer, it will take time and a bit of try and error. Parametric solutions are also very clunky and often not as feature rich. (Which is a pain if using it for woodworking) Another thing that is the whole "derivate" thing most professional CAD solutions offer - e.g. build plans, CAM, BOM, simulation,etc. You can do them with FreeCAD, but it takes some plugins and is nearly as good or comfortable as the professional solutions.

        The other side is performance and stability. FreeCAD is a nightmare when it comes to importing thing with a lot facets or large files, is unstable as fuck when working with large assemblies and generally is slower compared to other solutions. (Even the otherwise not very fast Solidworks is faster)

        In the end I would recommend you to try all three of them (and a few others from the list) and then decide if you can be bothered to use FreeCAD or find another solution worth it more. (Personally I would avoid Fusion,btw. due to the fact that it gets more enshitified daily)

41 comments