Best/Recommended CAD software for a beginner

[Praetorian_TMOTC]

Hi All,

So after seeing the Up! at Cebit this year and having a chat with Maddox I bit the bullet and bought the Plus.

Having never worked with CAD before, I'm after some software to start designing. Having a look at some of the previews I like the look of Inventor however being an Autodesk product I'm thinking it may be too advanced. So if there's something similar that is fairly easy to learn and has plenty of resources available (or if someone has some free training materials) I'm happy to give it a go. I'm not sure if all the products have a simulation view allowing the object to be moved around constraints but this is something that would be needed. Free/Open Source is my preferred but happy to go with a paid product if it will make for an easier learning curve.

Appreciate all the suggestions :)

Cheers,

Adrian.

[Nick Johnson]

I'm using Alibre, and I'm personally pretty happy with it. I've never been comfortable modelling stuff directly in 3d, but Alibre lets you sketch things in 2D (parametrically!), then apply transformations like 'extrude', 'revolve', etc, to turn them into 3d objects.

The personal edition costs $200, but there's a free trial - by all means give it a go and see if it suits.

-Nick

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[Madox]

I'm an advocate of Alibre which quite a few people at the space has purchased.  It isn't free, but it is certainly very good value for money.

As Nick points out it is sketch based and parametric similar to Solidworks/CATIA/NX but for a fraction of the price for hobbyists.

This is what I would recommend for 'Engineering' style modelling where components are dimensioned.

Organic modelling I'll use a sculpting software, "Sculptris" is very nice and exports to OBJ.

Download yourself a copy of Meshlabs to convert between various formats (e,g, OBJ -> STL to print).

I can show you each if you pop around to the space one day :)  Alibre has a 30 day trial you can download too.

[Praetorian_TMOTC]

So Alibre looks like the popular choice :) Think that I'll take you up on your offer John and get you to show it to me. Are you planning on being at the space any time this week or weekend? I'm working a shift that finishes at 2pm this week so anytime after that is good for me. Will be good to finally come around and see the space also!

[Kris]

Not that I've used it for printing but I've worked a bit in googles sketch up. Its a nice basic introduction into cad, and currently I've been using it to model the house and garden. The video tutorials are actually useful and easy to understand. There is an entire menu system greyed out for solid works, which I think is only enabled for the pro version.
Basically as a basic easy to use and free version of cad sketch up is great.
Others on here can tell you how it is for 3d printing.

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Praetorian_TMOTC <praetori...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[benz001]

Can anyone suggest a good solution that's Mac native? (ie not using Fusion/Bootcamp)

Sketchup is great (particularly for the price!) but pretty limited and the tool chain to get to a printable file is rather frustrating - I use Draftsight for Mac for 2D stuff but I'm yet to find a decent native 3D design tool that runs on Mac :-(

[kris]

I know Sam (bcc'd on this as he gets the list in digest) went on a
course for a 3d modelling product.
Unfortunately i can't remember what it was 0_o
Sam?

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[Madox]

Sketchup is not recommended for 3D printing, i doesn't generate solids but rather surfaces only and I think someone else points out to get a printable file from it is a PITA.

Praetorian_TMOTC <praetori...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Franc Carter]

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Madox <mado...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sketchup is not recommended for 3D printing, i doesn't generate solids but rather surfaces only and I think someone else points out to get a printable file from it is a PITA.

That's been my experience as well

 

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[Matt Cabanag]

It's not actually that hard to do it in Sketchup. Just use the STL
plugin. I used it to design this!

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6795

5 minutes to design and export, 15 mins to print. 20 minutes from
hunger to lunch.

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[Ada Lim]

I've used the STL plugin and it works... until you realise that your model is subtly wrong, then you get to recreate it.  in a parametric program, you change one parameter then print again.