What are some good tools for designing my own 3D Printer blueprints?

Drez

I got my family the X1C for Christmas and I want to design a couple of things to have the printer print them. What's a good tool to use to design a blueprint?

furlion

Tinkercad is free and very simple. It is the alphabet building blocks compared to the tinker Toys of the more complex CAD software. FreeCad, Blender, and fusion 360 are much more complex and full featured. However the are also exponentially more complex. Like holy shit.

Drez

furlion wrote: »

Tinkercad is free and very simple. It is the alphabet building blocks compared to the tinker Toys of the more complex CAD software. FreeCad, Blender, and fusion 360 are much more complex and full featured. However the are also exponentially more complex. Like holy shit.

Thank you!

Elvenshae

Yep, agreed on the above. Tinkercad is a great place to start, and I still use it for basic use cases where I’m not willing to wait for the start-up time for and don’t need the power of Fusion.

Most of my work is done in Fusion, which has a free annual license for hobbyists. You’re limited to 10 “active” designs, but you can mark a design as inactive or active at any time, so it’s a fairly minor inconvenience.

I think picking up parameter-driven design skills is a good idea, and Fusion is a good place for that.

My understanding is that Blender is better if you’re looking to design, like, organic shapes (animals, minis, etc.) and Tinkercad / Fusion is better for “parts.”

Drez

What’s a good design I can print that will make me a trillion dollars and make reality universally better for everyone and

Cello

Blender for organic shapes, one of the CAD programs for shapes where measurements matter

I personally prefer Solidworks Maker over Fusion because Fusion really started nickel and diming all the features

OpenCAD also can be good if you find algorithmic designs made for the program - I used it to make dice blanks and quick boxes which can be useful

Files can be found for free on Thingiverse but also for pay on Etsy - just do a cursory search before you pay for any because of course some of them are stolen from free designs

Einzel

Blender is what I'd consider surfacing cad. It let's you make organic stuff really well, but dimensionally, well... Good for cool shapes or importing point cloud type scans.

And as the biggest SolidWorks hater on the planet, I will instead recommend getting a student version of Solid Edge instead, cause it's free (and excellent). And better than SW. Did I mention SW sucks? The student version is full as far as I can tell except it causes a semi permanent watermark on drawings and you can't move the files to real solid edge which won't matter cause you're exporting translated file types.

Anyway, those are parametric cad wherein you create things from shapes with additions and subtractions and can easily control dimensions. Good for parts.

Cello

I like Solidworks but I've also used it on the job a bunch and gotten used to its particular quirks, so shrug!

Einzel

Yeah. I won't discount it for its universality, but it feels so kludgey to me. Everything seems to be buried in a menu or take 3 more clicks than I think it should. But also I'm feeling spicy 😅

ChicoBlue

If you want a CAD program that is created with 3d artists in mind, rather than engineers, you can always test out Plasticity.

Bizarro Echo

I've been meaning to check out Plasticity for, uh, reasons.

Drez

ChicoBlue wrote: »

If you want a CAD program that is created with 3d artists in mind, rather than engineers, you can always test out Plasticity.

This looks so familiar

Gilgaron

We got the kids a P1S and currently print time is the most valuable post-holiday commodity, they haven't even built all the legos they got yet! From the in-laws they got a Metaquest 3, is there a way to use that to model things in 3d or is more of a 'toy'? My old gaming PC (i5-750/R9 380) is at the desk we put the printer on and while they've mostly been using the mobile app and ready to go prints, I was impressed when my older daughter (who has experience with 3d printers at school) pegged the processor out processing some articulated dragon model she downloaded so I know these aren't necessarily the easiest things to drive.

furlion

We have a quest 2 and they are just toys yeah. If there is any sort of 3d modeling software available it would have to be very simple and basic. Those programs eat PCs for breakfast so i really can't imagine the battery powered quest being able to handle anything that wasn't extremely simple. I use Cura to slice with and while it will definitely lock up the program when dealing with complex stuff, it has always finished the actual job. Might have to leave it sitting there for a few minutes but it has never actually crashed which is impressive. With the bambu stuff you are locked to their slicer i think but there are things you can do to speed up the print time, but i don't know how comfortable you are playing with settings if you just got it.

redx

You can hook a quest up to a PC, by usb or Wi-Fi, and then have access to any VR modeling software, using the Quest as just an interface.

2 years ago, when I last looked, this didn't really change the situation where VR modeling software isn't really beyond toy status.

Drez

Update: I’m still not a millionaire.

furlion

redx wrote: »

You can hook a quest up to a PC, by usb or Wi-Fi, and then have access to any VR modeling software, using the Quest as just an interface.

2 years ago, when I last looked, this didn't really change the situation where VR modeling software isn't really beyond toy status.

While VR could maybe make CAD modeling easier in some ways, it's so niche i can't see any developer devoting the resources to get it actually working well. It would be cool to be able to like, grab a cube and shape it with your hands, but it would not work for any sort of precision based designing.

Drez

I’m afraid of using VR for CAD just in case my creation comes alive either digitally or physically and beats me to death.

ChicoBlue

VR sculpting seems like it could be fun!

I don't think that it would improve my current poly or CAD modelling workflow, apart from seeing things in scale and wandering around them during concept phases.

redx

furlion wrote: »

redx wrote: »

You can hook a quest up to a PC, by usb or Wi-Fi, and then have access to any VR modeling software, using the Quest as just an interface.

2 years ago, when I last looked, this didn't really change the situation where VR modeling software isn't really beyond toy status.

While VR could maybe make CAD modeling easier in some ways, it's so niche i can't see any developer devoting the resources to get it actually working well. It would be cool to be able to like, grab a cube and shape it with your hands, but it would not work for any sort of precision based designing.

More make a model or figure, and import that into a CAD thing for the parts where measurements matter.

I have a laptop stand that the visible parts of were made in Adobe's... substance? Fusion is annoying about the polygons it will make meshes and solids and stuff out of.

I think you could get parity for measurements in VR with a lot of UI work. Though, do you really want to be immersed in your CAD program? Aren't you generally reading off a specification or 6? And who wants to wear a VR rig for hours in end?

djm

OpenSCAD, but only if you like writing code more than using a mouse.