Hello all.  Sorry if this has already been covered 100's of times....

3D Printing
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1

Hello all. Sorry if this has already been covered 100’s of times…

I am itching to take the plunge and buy a small, ‘cheap’ 3d printer. Something like the Makibox or Sumpod. However, before I fork out the readies I want to mess around with some design software, so I can gauge how long it will take to model something ready for 3d printing.

Is there any good, freeware out there that you guys would recommend for a beginner like me?

2

It depends what you want to model and how your mind works. Try all of the following and see what suits your needs.
Tinkercad - good for beginners
Blender - my favourite. Hard but powerful
Sketchup - didn’t suit me but some like it
Sculptris - dynamic sculpting tool

3

I also like Autodesk 123d Design. It has some issues, but is still relatively powerful for a free tool

4

If you are programmer, then openscad (http://www.openscad.org/ ) or http://coffeescad.net/ are good. If you are more visually oriented, blender (http://blender.org ) is good. And if you get cura (http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Cura ) you will also get estimate of how long it will take to print your models.

5

Yep, as a software engineer with no art skills whatsoever I could only work using openscad. I expect someone could teach me CAD but that’s a skill in its own right!

6

+1 for openscad. Part of me wants to move to coffescad or some such because the openscad “programming language” is so poor, and probably not turing complete (variables don’t and constants aren’t)… Feels that way sometimes, anyhow… But so many people are doing so many great things in openscad still, its hard to argue.

7

Thanks all. I’ll certainly try a few to see what ‘suits’.

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I’m surprised no one mentioned FreeCAD. Try it out, it’s free and powerful.

9

It depends what you want to draw / print.
3D Canvas
3DPlus
3DVIA Shape
Alibre Design Xpress
Anim8or
Art of Illusion
Autocad 123D
Autodesk 123D Design
AutoQ3D Community – 3D Editor
Bishop3D
Blender
Blink 3D
BRL-CAD
Coffeescad
Cura
Designspark
DesignWorkshop Lite
eDrawings
FreeCAD
GDesign 2.0
google SketchUp Pro
HeeksCad
IceSl
K-3D
K3DSurf
Minos
OpenSCAD
POV-ray
Sculptris
Seamless3d
SOFTIMAGE|XSI Mod Tool
Sweet Home 3D
Thinkercad
TopMod3d
TrueSpace
Zmodeler

10

I think someone is just showing off now ;o)

11

I learned on tinkercad, then moved to openSCAD. if you understand programming I highly recommend openSCAD.

12

I heard a lot about Blender and took the challenge. I like it a lot and have tried sketch up, sculptris, and been meaning to open 123D Design which I have downloaded. So far once I made the effort to see all Blender has to offer, I am willing to learn more to use it than try the others. (watch tutorials - I can suggest a few)

13

@Eddy_Castro I have couple more for you: 3DTin and OpenJSCAD. Plus one typo: it’s not Thinkercad, but Tinkercad.
I am using OpenSCAD now.