FrankLeisten
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2018 9:23 am

Re: CAD Recommendation to use with S3D

Thank You
tenaja
Posts: 157
Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2014 5:16 pm

Re: CAD Recommendation to use with S3D

I use Alibre Design. Their $200 version is great for hobbyists. I have had no issues importing into S3D. Once in a while I have had to repair a file, but that is extremely rare.
SusiT140V
Posts: 52
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2016 5:12 pm

Re: CAD Recommendation to use with S3D

Fusion 360 is incredible value (free) for hobbyist, student, and business startup use.

It's Autodesk Inventor's little brother.
FrankLeisten
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2018 9:23 am

Re: CAD Recommendation to use with S3D

Thank You
MichaelHerron
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2015 2:36 pm

Re: CAD Recommendation to use with S3D

Onshape is another free, powerful CAD tool. So long as you don't mind your models living in the cloud and being public, its free. It is web based and can be used on any platform--including your tablet or phone.

Personally, i use solidworks running inside Parallels on my mac, and it works great. It is not an economical solution, however.
jkmajcen
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2018 10:58 am

Re: CAD Recommendation to use with S3D

arhi wrote: Thu Jan 10, 2019 4:24 am any cad tool will work with s3d as long as it can export STL

out of free app's blender is the most stable & powerful one, but has a very steep learning curve .. it's best free thing to do modeling of organic stuff .. it's a mesh only modeler (don't understand solids)

freecad is organized as engineering modeling tool but is not very stable & fast, you can do lot of stuff quickly, you can generate professional designs, can work with IGES and STEP files, it understands both meshes and solids, development is active and it's getting faster and more stable every day, upgrade regularly

Art of Illusion is also very good modeling tool, not too fast (java) but decent and simple to use with powerful scripting possibilities (I use it for e.g. to create involute gear designs)

openscad - extremly fast and super powerful if you don't mind "coding your part" - not for "designers" :) ... you design your part in text editor :)

all of them work on macos

now, there are web based ones:

- fusion360 (very powerful, free, popular in 3d printing world)
- onshape - from the makers of solidworks, extremely powerful but free version makes all your designs public, if you want private projects you have to pay, it allows for multiple ppl to work on same design in the same time, my favorite free tool (I don't care that designs are public, I share them anyhow)
- tinkercad - very popular among noobs, allow super easy creation of basic stuff, allow super easy editing of stl files etc etc.. terrible for very complex stuff but for complex designs you outta go with fusion360 or onshape anyhow

there are more but these are the most popular ones .. there are also student / crippled versions of some professional packages that get available from time to time but I tend to avoid those as full versions cost arm and a leg
Fusion 360 is not "web based" but rather heavily leveraging Cloud/web for storage.
tenaja
Posts: 157
Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2014 5:16 pm

Re: CAD Recommendation to use with S3D

jkmajcen wrote: Mon Mar 04, 2019 3:57 pm
Fusion 360 is not "web based" but rather heavily leveraging Cloud/web for storage.
Can you store locally instead?
jkmajcen
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2018 10:58 am

Re: CAD Recommendation to use with S3D

tenaja wrote: Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:06 pm
jkmajcen wrote: Mon Mar 04, 2019 3:57 pm
Fusion 360 is not "web based" but rather heavily leveraging Cloud/web for storage.
Can you store locally instead?
Yes. There is a "cached" mode you can enable for offline use.
arhi
Posts: 483
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2016 5:13 pm

Re: CAD Recommendation to use with S3D

jkmajcen wrote: Mon Mar 04, 2019 3:57 pm Fusion 360 is not "web based" but rather heavily leveraging Cloud/web for storage.
the 3d view you are looking at is embedded web page and the whole thing is using webgl to do 3d so while you are not viewing it in regular browser it is still web based (number of operations are "local app" so it's not 100% web), but since recently (Project Leopard) fusion360 is moving to a pure web app so it's questionable if the old style (mix of web and local app) will continue at all and in what way
gcodestat integrates with Simplify3D and allow you to
Calculate print time accurately (acceleration, max speed, junction deviation all taken into consideration)
Embed M117 codes into G-Code
Upload your G-Code directly to Octoprint
open source and unlicence

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