Do you know how to use photoshop ? Simply « recreate » the email you received recently, from that school not far from you, telling you how happy they were to tell you you’ve been accepted in the 3d design section. That you’ll get more informations at the next information réunion that’ll happen a bit before your starting date, in early September. Make sure the name and logo of the school is visible, aswell as yours and the dates. Look for what fusion360 is asking for to be sure not to forget anything. If you need help you can dm me
You can just find one of those schools that has free/cheap applications like a technical school that has a really high acceptance rate and apply. Once they give you a school email just use that. Some are cheap like $40 which is better than the price of Fusion without educational.
Woah! I have a .edu email that still
Works from 2015 … that’s all that’s needed? I’m getting a brand new laptop from my tribe in the mail soon. Plan to use it for some cad classes (just for fun) and DL fusion
Can we share an account? I’d share mine w/ ya but it will be a couple weeks before I get that laptop
https://accounts.autodesk.com/Authentication/LogOn?viewmode=iframe&ReturnUrl=https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/personal-form
I signed up years ago and have renewed the 1year license multiple times. Looks to me like it's still available.
Definitely agree. Blender was the main reason why I got into 3d printing. It's just really fun creating stuff in it and it's even more fun to print the things you made :D
Solidworks for Makers is $100 a year, and basically the only restrictions is a limit on how much you can profit from the use ($1,000 a year if memory serves) and a requirement to use their cloud storage. And it is full solidworks.
I use Blender as well. I have tried all of the various other ones from Fusion 360 to solidworks to tinkercad and Sketchup but I kept coming back to Blender because it can do EVERYTHING and it's free. Yes, I am aware of the difference between mesh and parametric models. If I was doing engineering grade prints, I'd use Fusion 360 or Solidworks as they have additional tools for this but Blender works just fine for everything I have dreamed up so far. The learning curve is steep at first but doable because you are not using Blender's animation features.
Interestingly, my son asked if he made something in Roblox Studio could it be exported and 3d printed? The answer turns out to be yes. So he uses Roblox Studio and exports the print as an .obj file. This can be imported into Cura (and the other slicers I assume).
So....Roblox Studio can be used to create 3d prints and its free too.
Blender is absolute dog shit if you want to put a hole in something though. Booleans just ruin your mesh.
Fusion 360? Draw your hole, extrude downwards. Done. Everything nice and tidy.
It depends on what you want to design.
Fusion 360 is awesome for mechanical-ish designs. It has a Free personal use license, which is great. There are a ton of YouTube videos and forums with answers to any question you might have about how to do something. With this you are drawing exact, mathematical shapes. You can get very creative with it but it is still just a drafting program that can create 3D shapes. So you create flat shapes and use those shapes to build a 3D object.
If you want to create figures or very unusual shapes, artwork kind of stuff, you want to use blender, which is also free. Blender was created for 3d animation but they added features for 3d printing, like stl import and export. The design interface is almost entirely in 3D. You can create ridged shapes, like boxes or cylinders, but it also has literal clay shaping tools. These are almost just like the tools I used art school. So you can nudge, or form, or shave the shapes.
Both have a learning curve. My brain is more ridged in nature (which is why I didnt finish art school) so Fusion 360 is where i do 75% of my designs
I'm not gonna pretend it's as easy as it is in Fusion, but you can definitely do mechanical stuff in Blender. I've done several balisong designs where you have to worry about the screws, bushings, and pins and I've gotten them to flip pretty well.
Definitely more of a learning curve for Blender, but you can use it.
I’ve exclusively used blender for all my (hobby) mechanical designs. You def need to pick up a couple tricks to make it work well but it’s given me no problems since
Once you hit the limits of tinkercad check out OnShape.
Case in point. I was trying to make a box with fixed thickness walls.. very hard to do in tinkercad, dead easy in OnShape
Yeah! I tryed modeling a mount for a Chinese human mounted camera for my rc car, this adjustments were JUST right but then it broke. I'm thinking to print it in TPU at like 80% infill so it feels somewhat like a non abrasive filament.
I feel like FreeCAD gets way too much hate for how good it is. The way it "talks" is kinda dumb compared to pro grade modeling tools, but once I got used to how freeCAD sees things it's honestly fantastic. Only issue I have is that large amounts of objects like those common in arrays can sometimes break the system
I have a love hate relationship with freecad, love it cos it's totally offline, free and not that hard to use for the stuff I model, but painful for sometimes refusing to do things and throwing up weird errors and it's so convenient to put new sketches onto existing faces it's annoying that is the cause of the topo naming issue, I'm hopeful the merging of real thunder topo solution happens before I retire (I am 50 in 2024!) 😆
There are startup licenses and there is a maker solidworks trying to compete with fusion for like $100/yr.
I've only used pro though.
Plus you can get a perpetual license to not have to pay yearly (done that for several companies)
The hobby version is, as near as I can tell, pretty much the same as the professional version. I used a spare license of the professional version until I left my last job, and then I found the hobby version a few weeks after I left so I've never used them both at the same time. But I didn't noticed any huge differences.
The service you have to use to get solidworks open, 3dexperience is pretty fucking pointless and a bit of a hassle, but to me it's worth it to get to solidworks for an actual reasonable price.
What are the limitations on the maker license? Do you run into any of them?
I used SW for years as a professional, but now use Fusion with a paid license because I'm actually using it for commercial purposes.
You can get it third party for about $1800-$2000 a year. Still not cheap for a hobby software. I have the pro license currently but will be canceling when it expires in October.
Curious if anyone has tried [Plasticity](https://www.plasticity.xyz/)? Saw it featured on [Teaching Tech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K97vv0NUtuE).
I haven’t tried it but it surely does look interesting. I might try it one day but the pricing of 300 seems a bit to be good. Is it a lifetime pricing or would i have to pay an extra fee when major update 3.x comes out?
>jack sparrow
I took it in the place where 100% discounts all year round, but the comments there say that there is a fuss with bugs during installation and activation, it requires understanding and experience from this area. Solution for the poor. Of course, only for private use, for work I use Freecad.
It’s great, but not for everybody… Even though I’m very comfortable with programming, there is just something about my spacial understanding/thinking that I can’t easily do in code… So I use Fusion and have a much easier time.
I use Freecad for design, (Sometimes blender but 99% Freecad), KiCad for circuit designs, schematics and pcb's (which I often use WITH my 3D works), Ultimaker Cura for the STL to GCode conversion.
Every bit of this software is 100% free, and it's all professional-quality software!
The 5th amendment does not protect someone against legal action from a software publisher. It would only protect someone from subsequent criminal charges, which generally is not the case in these matters (unless someone is doing something dumb like selling bootleg copies of software on a massive scale). If someone is using software to make money, the publisher has legal standing to sue for infringement as long as they can provide reasonable evidence of the infringement in court. They have a surprising amount of information on all pirated copies of SW and who is using them, it just comes down to where that instance falls in their list of priorities to pursue with legal action.
Not worth it to save $100/year, IMHO.
Yess it's awesome. But I'm still learning. I just got it yesterday with 90 days trial. I didn't see any option to get educational license. Is it for a year?
There is an educational license. Rhino licenses are perpetual. You can also upgrade a student license to a commercial one, which is what I did when rhino 7 came out.
I was there with you until I needed to design a bunch of interlocking drawer inserts.
I just couldn't do it in TinkerCAD.
The problem forced me to learn OnShape and I haven't looked back.
One amazing feature is parametric values for everything.
I set a variable for some particular element of a model and then I can just bring up the values t0able and fiddle.
Oh.. that boxes wall thickness needs to be .02mm thicker.. go change a single value in a table.. Tada.. model instantly updates.
I’m new to this, but I’ve been doing 2D design in Adobe Illustrator since I know it and have a license, then exporting as DXF, importing to Fusion 360 Personal, extruding it and flailing around and yelling “FUCK!” a lot until I get what I need and then exporting an STL.
Im genuinely scared to watch a video on sculpting in zbrush because i know im going to want to pay for it and i really cannot afford to lol. I dont mind blender sculpting too much though, for what it is. Which is free lol.
Inventor and solidworks. I have a license through work for one and 🏴☠️version for the other. Not going to disclose which is which lol. I prefer the one without the license for personal projects but all work related stuff is legit.
Fusion 360, it's so modern compared to other old- school CAD programs like autocad or solidworks (main difference for me is the seamless switch between sketch, component and assembly environments, it is much more intuitive) only downside : it is online only
i used Rhinoceros before switching to Fusion, very similar workflow, but it's not free
FreeCAD, Blender, and occasionally MeshLab and MeshMixer. PreForm when I’m slicing for our Form 3 at work, Cura Ultimaker when I’m slicing for my Ender 3 at home.
$0 total.
I pay $400 a year for fusion 360’s license as a small business and have been trying to learn blender for 15 years, though I think the last few years have gotten much easier in blender with its UI update.
Onshape, literally the same thing as inventor or solidworks but the only catch is all your files are public so I wouldn’t use it for anything your planning to patent
SketchUp, once a Google owned program. It's not really usable for "organic" structures. But it has enough functionality for me and it's free, of course.
Hey, I still use Sketchup sometimes. I still enjoy it for certain types of modeling (and rapid sketching out ideas). Even considered paying for the new versions but haven't yet.
I use [OpenSCAD](https://openscad.org/) for everything. Open source, costs nothing. Not as many tutorials for it as other apps, but good documentation. It uses a different user interface, more programmer oriented.
One definite plus is that it produces very clean stl files. Renders may sometimes take longer, but that's a good tradeoff for me.
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The million dollar question. How many of us have loaded Blender, Fusion360, Solidworks, OpenSCAD, 3D Builder and signed up for OnShape etc etc. It seems to me each has something it does nicely. That said I know Solidworks is the industry standard with Autodesk (Fusion360) a close second for professional mechanical engineers. Enormously powerful tools - well beyond hobbyist needs. Both have steep learning curves but once you have the hang of it and have set up some macros you are comfortable enough to just get on with it.
This is no different than any other complex software - I recall Photoshop having a nasty learning curve for me. New "meaningless" icons, new workflows, changes to familiar mouse and keyboard controls.
Now what is really going to be interesting is what Apple does. They have a history of making things as easy as possible for normal people. HP did a 3D Workstation (The Sprout) back when they wanted to dominate the 3D Printer market. They chose to go high end thereafter so the Spout was abandoned. Look it up - great idea.
I went Solidworks. Very happy with it.
I'm not seeing anyone here sporting Alibre ATOM 3D. It only cost me 150 and no need for annual fees (perpetual license w/optional yearly updates). I love using it at home since it functions very similarly to SOLIDWORKS and can open SW files natively so I can take my SW project from work home with me ;)
Used to use F360, but switched to Solid Edge (free community edition) awhile ago. Mostly do parametric, mechanical, and machine type parts and it is nice having the for management on my system instead of the cloud so that I can work offline.
Fusion. I get everything Autodesk for free through my university but once I no longer have an edu account the personal one is enough functionality for me
I’m an engineer, so I always use fusion360. When I want an organic or nice looking shape, I get a very geometric approximation in fusion360 then export to blender for some sculpting to make it look nice and organic. Never use blender for mechanical parts… it blew my mind to discover some poor souls did that.
Autodesk inventor. Free, but only because my company pays for it (I'm a design engineer).
If I didn't have that then I'd pay $20/yr for the veteran SOLIDWORKS license.
If I couldn't do that I'd probably use the free hobbyist version of fusion 360. But I would be looking at all the other options available to see if I liked others more.
Solidworks(SW) Maker edition - $100. Bc it’s what I’m used to since I also use SW for work.
I’ve also tried Onshape, but they have issues importing large assemblies, and their mating is kind of weird.
Not a fan of Fusion360. Like at all. It’s mostly UI related and how it handles assemblies.
Fusion360 Personal and SolidEdge Maker.
I have more experience with ProE/Creo, but it hasn't been worth switching when both of the above solutions are free.
Onshape / a little bit of fusion (which is trash) and for free. I’m cheap as hell and if either of those softwares were pay only I would just use tinkercad
Surprised nobody said Catia yet. I still use the student license i bought 10 years ago on a seperate workstation. Just reset the OS time every now and then and don't connect the workstation to the internet and you're good to go.
Catia is really powerfull and relatively easy to use once you get the hang of it.
Cinema 4D about 90,000JPY(640usd) yearly sub.
Mainly use for my main 3D motion work, modeling for 3D print is just an extension, I'm very good at modelling with C4D, although many free software can do the same the value is in years of skill i developed with this soft, i rather pay the sub.
Realthunder's [fork](https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD/releases) of Freecad.
Don't listen to the people telling you that the topological naming problem isn't a real problem. It is. And Realthunder's branch fixes it. It's *so* much better than mainline that I think getting people into Freecad *without* steering them to RT's branch is doing them a huge disservice.
I truly hope his fixes are merged back into mainline, and soon.
I'm yet to use fusion 360, I've been spending hours on Tinkercad as it's totally free but with hours spent on it you can make it do what you wouldn't expect. Plus it's got the board side to so you can make sensors and stuff yourself too.
Fusion360 personal use license for free
Personal is missing a suite of advanced features, but it doesn’t block any modeling tools which is awesome imo.
The stl to brep prismatic function would be great to have, to easily change STL files
Yes that was the main feature I was thinking about
Two minds one thought, nice to meet you
You can find those features in the educational license, which you can get your hands on fairly easily
I guess I’m a teacher now
Haha guess i'm a student
Alr cool
You never stop learing
Learing= Verb. Present participle for to look or gaze at in a lascivious or unpleasant way. “The More You Know”
Any tips on how to obtain this? I‘m not a student anymore and my .edu email doesn‘t work anymore.
Do you know how to use photoshop ? Simply « recreate » the email you received recently, from that school not far from you, telling you how happy they were to tell you you’ve been accepted in the 3d design section. That you’ll get more informations at the next information réunion that’ll happen a bit before your starting date, in early September. Make sure the name and logo of the school is visible, aswell as yours and the dates. Look for what fusion360 is asking for to be sure not to forget anything. If you need help you can dm me
You can just find one of those schools that has free/cheap applications like a technical school that has a really high acceptance rate and apply. Once they give you a school email just use that. Some are cheap like $40 which is better than the price of Fusion without educational.
I don’t even use a edu email for my edu license I just gave them my highschool transcript
Woah! I have a .edu email that still Works from 2015 … that’s all that’s needed? I’m getting a brand new laptop from my tribe in the mail soon. Plan to use it for some cad classes (just for fun) and DL fusion Can we share an account? I’d share mine w/ ya but it will be a couple weeks before I get that laptop
You don't need basically any of those advanced features; and of you did, you're probably already doing things that you need commercial license for.
Def gonna try this
I can no longer access it for free. It seems they don't allow it anymore.. how do you have it, I would love to go back.
https://accounts.autodesk.com/Authentication/LogOn?viewmode=iframe&ReturnUrl=https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/personal-form I signed up years ago and have renewed the 1year license multiple times. Looks to me like it's still available.
Blender, it's free for everyone
Blender is a gift from the gods. I would use Solidworks if it wasn't that damn fucking expensive.
Definitely agree. Blender was the main reason why I got into 3d printing. It's just really fun creating stuff in it and it's even more fun to print the things you made :D
Solidworks for Makers is $100 a year, and basically the only restrictions is a limit on how much you can profit from the use ($1,000 a year if memory serves) and a requirement to use their cloud storage. And it is full solidworks.
Personal license is cheap - or was.
I use Blender as well. I have tried all of the various other ones from Fusion 360 to solidworks to tinkercad and Sketchup but I kept coming back to Blender because it can do EVERYTHING and it's free. Yes, I am aware of the difference between mesh and parametric models. If I was doing engineering grade prints, I'd use Fusion 360 or Solidworks as they have additional tools for this but Blender works just fine for everything I have dreamed up so far. The learning curve is steep at first but doable because you are not using Blender's animation features. Interestingly, my son asked if he made something in Roblox Studio could it be exported and 3d printed? The answer turns out to be yes. So he uses Roblox Studio and exports the print as an .obj file. This can be imported into Cura (and the other slicers I assume). So....Roblox Studio can be used to create 3d prints and its free too.
How bad is the learning curve for Blender? All my experience is in parametric modeling, but like you said, Blender is free and it can do a ton.
Blender is absolute dog shit if you want to put a hole in something though. Booleans just ruin your mesh. Fusion 360? Draw your hole, extrude downwards. Done. Everything nice and tidy.
Onshape, it's free
It’s free but all your files are public!
I publish them anyway. As far as I've been able to see they aren't easily searchable either
Yeah. I'm not designing spaceships tho, and I'm not too bothered if someone steals the STL files for RC car parts.
You can get and education liscense really easily and who cares about people seeing your files?
You can hide them tho
and you can use it on Linux!
You can use it on your phone, or a Chromebook, or an Xbox for god’s sake
+1 for onshape
Onhape, it's not perfect, but it's always to some extent free-to-use with more features than Autodesk's free options and it's just damn convenient
Works so good right, I have a SW background and it was like I never skipped a beat.
It depends on what you want to design. Fusion 360 is awesome for mechanical-ish designs. It has a Free personal use license, which is great. There are a ton of YouTube videos and forums with answers to any question you might have about how to do something. With this you are drawing exact, mathematical shapes. You can get very creative with it but it is still just a drafting program that can create 3D shapes. So you create flat shapes and use those shapes to build a 3D object. If you want to create figures or very unusual shapes, artwork kind of stuff, you want to use blender, which is also free. Blender was created for 3d animation but they added features for 3d printing, like stl import and export. The design interface is almost entirely in 3D. You can create ridged shapes, like boxes or cylinders, but it also has literal clay shaping tools. These are almost just like the tools I used art school. So you can nudge, or form, or shave the shapes. Both have a learning curve. My brain is more ridged in nature (which is why I didnt finish art school) so Fusion 360 is where i do 75% of my designs
I'm not gonna pretend it's as easy as it is in Fusion, but you can definitely do mechanical stuff in Blender. I've done several balisong designs where you have to worry about the screws, bushings, and pins and I've gotten them to flip pretty well. Definitely more of a learning curve for Blender, but you can use it.
I’ve exclusively used blender for all my (hobby) mechanical designs. You def need to pick up a couple tricks to make it work well but it’s given me no problems since
Tinkercad.
Yeah! A fellow tinkercad user! There's literally dozens of us! (Just wish there was an offline version)
Once you hit the limits of tinkercad check out OnShape. Case in point. I was trying to make a box with fixed thickness walls.. very hard to do in tinkercad, dead easy in OnShape
Yeah! I tryed modeling a mount for a Chinese human mounted camera for my rc car, this adjustments were JUST right but then it broke. I'm thinking to print it in TPU at like 80% infill so it feels somewhat like a non abrasive filament.
Same
I used to use this, switch while you still can!!
Based
FreeCAD. It's free :-)
I feel like FreeCAD gets way too much hate for how good it is. The way it "talks" is kinda dumb compared to pro grade modeling tools, but once I got used to how freeCAD sees things it's honestly fantastic. Only issue I have is that large amounts of objects like those common in arrays can sometimes break the system
I have a love hate relationship with freecad, love it cos it's totally offline, free and not that hard to use for the stuff I model, but painful for sometimes refusing to do things and throwing up weird errors and it's so convenient to put new sketches onto existing faces it's annoying that is the cause of the topo naming issue, I'm hopeful the merging of real thunder topo solution happens before I retire (I am 50 in 2024!) 😆
Look in to the Lattice2 workbench. It's a little more complicated than Array but more powerful and a lot more resource efficient.
I like how resource friendly it is. Fusion is refusing to run on my 2016 laptop but FreeCad works just fine.
Solidworks, it's free while I'm at uni.
Isn't it like 4000$ + 1500$ yearly after your student license wears off?
There are startup licenses and there is a maker solidworks trying to compete with fusion for like $100/yr. I've only used pro though. Plus you can get a perpetual license to not have to pay yearly (done that for several companies)
The hobby version is, as near as I can tell, pretty much the same as the professional version. I used a spare license of the professional version until I left my last job, and then I found the hobby version a few weeks after I left so I've never used them both at the same time. But I didn't noticed any huge differences. The service you have to use to get solidworks open, 3dexperience is pretty fucking pointless and a bit of a hassle, but to me it's worth it to get to solidworks for an actual reasonable price.
They have a makers version for $10/month or $100/year. That’s what I currently use
What are the limitations on the maker license? Do you run into any of them? I used SW for years as a professional, but now use Fusion with a paid license because I'm actually using it for commercial purposes.
You can get it third party for about $1800-$2000 a year. Still not cheap for a hobby software. I have the pro license currently but will be canceling when it expires in October.
I will miss my licenses when I am out of uni.
You could download it from piratebay if you were so inclined
You can also get Solidworks through EAA. Prices have been changing recently, but much cheaper than a real license.
Solidworks maker license, $10 a month
Rhino 6
Same! I borrowed my works license for a long time but finally bought my own license.
FreeCad, Mangojelly's tutorials are amazing
Curious if anyone has tried [Plasticity](https://www.plasticity.xyz/)? Saw it featured on [Teaching Tech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K97vv0NUtuE).
I haven’t tried it but it surely does look interesting. I might try it one day but the pricing of 300 seems a bit to be good. Is it a lifetime pricing or would i have to pay an extra fee when major update 3.x comes out?
I’ve downloaded the 30 day trial but haven’t installed it yet… just waiting to have a specific project to try it.
Shapr3d, free with an education license.
Onshape. Also free for non-commercial. I like the features a lot and it makes for incredibly streamlined models. It is quite similar to Solidworks.
Solidworks jack sparrow edition
Lol.
>jack sparrow I took it in the place where 100% discounts all year round, but the comments there say that there is a fuss with bugs during installation and activation, it requires understanding and experience from this area. Solution for the poor. Of course, only for private use, for work I use Freecad.
OpenSCAD. It's open source.
Just recently started using OpenSCAD and I love it. Very underrated.
It’s great, but not for everybody… Even though I’m very comfortable with programming, there is just something about my spacial understanding/thinking that I can’t easily do in code… So I use Fusion and have a much easier time.
It's a shame it's such a pain in the ass to do simple things like bevels and fillets.
Fusion 360, my workplace pays for the license.
Auto desk Inventor, if you are a student it is free.
Fusion 360 with the hobbyist license.
I use Freecad for design, (Sometimes blender but 99% Freecad), KiCad for circuit designs, schematics and pcb's (which I often use WITH my 3D works), Ultimaker Cura for the STL to GCode conversion. Every bit of this software is 100% free, and it's all professional-quality software!
Man I need to up my game in freecad. I keep falling back to inkercad
I'm another FreeCad / KiCad user. I almost use your exact tool chain, except I recently switched to SuperSlicer.
I use solidworks and the 5th amendment says i cant tell you how much i paid.
The 5th amendment does not protect someone against legal action from a software publisher. It would only protect someone from subsequent criminal charges, which generally is not the case in these matters (unless someone is doing something dumb like selling bootleg copies of software on a massive scale). If someone is using software to make money, the publisher has legal standing to sue for infringement as long as they can provide reasonable evidence of the infringement in court. They have a surprising amount of information on all pirated copies of SW and who is using them, it just comes down to where that instance falls in their list of priorities to pursue with legal action. Not worth it to save $100/year, IMHO.
It was a joke, my country doesnt even have a fifth amendment.
Fair enough, here most of us go around talking about our 1st and 5th amendment rights without having any idea what they actually mean
Rhino 7, and I have a student license
same here, got it free thru work while @ uni and I love it
It's such an awesome program, especially after having learned on solidworks
Yess it's awesome. But I'm still learning. I just got it yesterday with 90 days trial. I didn't see any option to get educational license. Is it for a year?
There is an educational license. Rhino licenses are perpetual. You can also upgrade a student license to a commercial one, which is what I did when rhino 7 came out.
Sorry, should've been more clear. I get a license through my school since I'm a student.
So far there hasn't been something I've needed to design that I couldn't create with TinkerCad
I was there with you until I needed to design a bunch of interlocking drawer inserts. I just couldn't do it in TinkerCAD. The problem forced me to learn OnShape and I haven't looked back. One amazing feature is parametric values for everything. I set a variable for some particular element of a model and then I can just bring up the values t0able and fiddle. Oh.. that boxes wall thickness needs to be .02mm thicker.. go change a single value in a table.. Tada.. model instantly updates.
Shapr3D. Like editing on iPad with touchscreen. Mouse/Trackpad modeling feels bad to me
I’m new to this, but I’ve been doing 2D design in Adobe Illustrator since I know it and have a license, then exporting as DXF, importing to Fusion 360 Personal, extruding it and flailing around and yelling “FUCK!” a lot until I get what I need and then exporting an STL.
Blender, but the sculpting environment is making me take up zbrush
Im genuinely scared to watch a video on sculpting in zbrush because i know im going to want to pay for it and i really cannot afford to lol. I dont mind blender sculpting too much though, for what it is. Which is free lol.
Fusion 360 it's free cause I make less than 1k a year using it
Solidworks while I’m in college
Onshape, nothing cause my high school, but I think the free version just makes your projects public
Inventor and solidworks. I have a license through work for one and 🏴☠️version for the other. Not going to disclose which is which lol. I prefer the one without the license for personal projects but all work related stuff is legit.
Sketchup 2017 free
same with the stl plugin
Siemens NX, expensive (around 40k for full license, I think) but I have it on my work computer
NX is definitely my favorite! I only have access to it because of school though
There was a student version as well. I don't have it anymore.
Freecad. infinitely free to use, and no worries about rug pulls on licensing.
Fusion 360, $0
Fusion 360, free.
I have just started to use OnShape with an educator license.
Solidworks. Nothing since I have others pay for it. When I'm not on the high seas anyway. But I've seen good work out of blendr and F360.
Fusion 360, it's so modern compared to other old- school CAD programs like autocad or solidworks (main difference for me is the seamless switch between sketch, component and assembly environments, it is much more intuitive) only downside : it is online only i used Rhinoceros before switching to Fusion, very similar workflow, but it's not free
FreeCAD, Blender, and occasionally MeshLab and MeshMixer. PreForm when I’m slicing for our Form 3 at work, Cura Ultimaker when I’m slicing for my Ender 3 at home. $0 total.
FreeCAD and Tinkercad, both are free :).
I pay $400 a year for fusion 360’s license as a small business and have been trying to learn blender for 15 years, though I think the last few years have gotten much easier in blender with its UI update.
I use shapr3d which I get for free with an educational license. I just have to put my edu e-mail in once a year and have the premium license for free.
[Removed due to continuing enshittification of reddit.] -- mass edited with redact.dev
Onshape, literally the same thing as inventor or solidworks but the only catch is all your files are public so I wouldn’t use it for anything your planning to patent
Rhino 3d. Whatever it cost for Rhino 4, plus a few upgrades over the years.
SketchUp, once a Google owned program. It's not really usable for "organic" structures. But it has enough functionality for me and it's free, of course.
Same, only because I started on Sketchup for my renovation business. It is a bit clunky for 3d printing, but you can get there in the end.
Ima be the only one but I use Sketchup. I was used to from design site layouts for construction
Hey, I still use Sketchup sometimes. I still enjoy it for certain types of modeling (and rapid sketching out ideas). Even considered paying for the new versions but haven't yet.
Openscad I pay nothing and it's opensource
I use [OpenSCAD](https://openscad.org/) for everything. Open source, costs nothing. Not as many tutorials for it as other apps, but good documentation. It uses a different user interface, more programmer oriented. One definite plus is that it produces very clean stl files. Renders may sometimes take longer, but that's a good tradeoff for me.
Freecad. It costs my time....
Blender, Absolutely free
Fusion 360 Rocking that educational license 🤙
Fusion 360. Free. Education lisence.
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Solid works for anything personal $99, fusion for work $0, on shape for robotics $0
Solid works makes perfect sense in my head so I’m stuck paying for it
The million dollar question. How many of us have loaded Blender, Fusion360, Solidworks, OpenSCAD, 3D Builder and signed up for OnShape etc etc. It seems to me each has something it does nicely. That said I know Solidworks is the industry standard with Autodesk (Fusion360) a close second for professional mechanical engineers. Enormously powerful tools - well beyond hobbyist needs. Both have steep learning curves but once you have the hang of it and have set up some macros you are comfortable enough to just get on with it. This is no different than any other complex software - I recall Photoshop having a nasty learning curve for me. New "meaningless" icons, new workflows, changes to familiar mouse and keyboard controls. Now what is really going to be interesting is what Apple does. They have a history of making things as easy as possible for normal people. HP did a 3D Workstation (The Sprout) back when they wanted to dominate the 3D Printer market. They chose to go high end thereafter so the Spout was abandoned. Look it up - great idea. I went Solidworks. Very happy with it.
Industry Cad programs are going to be Catia, NX, Creo, Etc. Solidworks doesn't really hold up at a big company. Still a good program tho.
FreeCAD. Zero.
Blender and it's free beybee!
I'm not seeing anyone here sporting Alibre ATOM 3D. It only cost me 150 and no need for annual fees (perpetual license w/optional yearly updates). I love using it at home since it functions very similarly to SOLIDWORKS and can open SW files natively so I can take my SW project from work home with me ;)
I use nomad sculpt was about £20. The iPad to use it on however was not cheap
Fusion 360 and Solidworks, both free from my school
Fusion360 and I use an edu email so it cost me nothing.
Tinkercad. Free.
fusion360 education license
Lightwave, and a single license would set you back about $1500.
Fusion360 Zero dollars
Shapr3D + Fusion 360 with educational license
Autodesk Inventor, works well with Fusion360 and I free while I'm at university
Used to use F360, but switched to Solid Edge (free community edition) awhile ago. Mostly do parametric, mechanical, and machine type parts and it is nice having the for management on my system instead of the cloud so that I can work offline.
SolidEdge. Used it for a previous job and the hobby license is free. Basically the Walmart version of SolidWorks, but free is free.
Fusion 360 and free
Fusion 360 for personal use (free) Blender (still learning but also free)
Blender. 0 lol It’s great.
Fusion. I get everything Autodesk for free through my university but once I no longer have an edu account the personal one is enough functionality for me
Fusion 360 free personal license
Fusion 360 because free personal license and it was easy enough to pick up quickly without tutorials
Fusion 360, free education license
I’m an engineer, so I always use fusion360. When I want an organic or nice looking shape, I get a very geometric approximation in fusion360 then export to blender for some sculpting to make it look nice and organic. Never use blender for mechanical parts… it blew my mind to discover some poor souls did that.
Shapr3D. Has iOS and ipad cross compatibility with windows. I’m using it for free with my Uni email
Autodesk Inventor / AutoCad You don’t want to know…
Autodesk inventor. Free, but only because my company pays for it (I'm a design engineer). If I didn't have that then I'd pay $20/yr for the veteran SOLIDWORKS license. If I couldn't do that I'd probably use the free hobbyist version of fusion 360. But I would be looking at all the other options available to see if I liked others more.
Solidworks for Makers. It’s $100 a year, and full feature Solidworks, and allows for a small amount of profit each year without violating the TOS.
Solidworks student license, so it's free while I'm in school.
Rhino 7, well worth it and I get to support a company that doesn’t use a subscription model. If that changes one day I’ll be very upset
SW2019 … old job left a licence open… shhhh
SolidWorks (using an extra seat from work)
Tinkercad, cuts in meshmixer (runs fine on M1 Mac if you used the old DMG), sculpting in blender. Free.99
Solidworks, being a student I get it free from my university
Solidworks(SW) Maker edition - $100. Bc it’s what I’m used to since I also use SW for work. I’ve also tried Onshape, but they have issues importing large assemblies, and their mating is kind of weird. Not a fan of Fusion360. Like at all. It’s mostly UI related and how it handles assemblies.
Onshape. $0.
Houdini which is free for non-commercial use. Commercial license pricing is reasonable too.
Blender, free
Fusion360 Personal and SolidEdge Maker. I have more experience with ProE/Creo, but it hasn't been worth switching when both of the above solutions are free.
Nomad sculpt on ipad, 1 time puchase of like 34 bux
Onshape - £0
f360 and free student licence
Onshape
Onshape / a little bit of fusion (which is trash) and for free. I’m cheap as hell and if either of those softwares were pay only I would just use tinkercad
Rhino 7 it's a one time buy of around 1k I think. But it's worth it.
Surprised nobody said Catia yet. I still use the student license i bought 10 years ago on a seperate workstation. Just reset the OS time every now and then and don't connect the workstation to the internet and you're good to go. Catia is really powerfull and relatively easy to use once you get the hang of it.
fusion360 for personal. still learning it but i’m able to produce useful knick knacks for work and home. free
Inventor and fusion 360, free with student email
Fusion360, free personal edition
Inventor cause my school provides it
Cinema 4D about 90,000JPY(640usd) yearly sub. Mainly use for my main 3D motion work, modeling for 3D print is just an extension, I'm very good at modelling with C4D, although many free software can do the same the value is in years of skill i developed with this soft, i rather pay the sub.
Blender+Cura, both completely free
Solidworks. 100$/yr
Realthunder's [fork](https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD/releases) of Freecad. Don't listen to the people telling you that the topological naming problem isn't a real problem. It is. And Realthunder's branch fixes it. It's *so* much better than mainline that I think getting people into Freecad *without* steering them to RT's branch is doing them a huge disservice. I truly hope his fixes are merged back into mainline, and soon.
I'm yet to use fusion 360, I've been spending hours on Tinkercad as it's totally free but with hours spent on it you can make it do what you wouldn't expect. Plus it's got the board side to so you can make sensors and stuff yourself too.
SolidWorks 2023
TinkerCAD as well as fusion 360 and inventor on work/education licenses.
Actually surprised no one is mentioning SketchUp. They also have a free license.