I visited a friend who is a professional medical engineer, and watched him work on a 3D design on some software paid for my the university they worked at. The options and features looked very practical!
Although I am not even close to working on so complicated projects, I did love the funtionalities. So now i have decided to put in the effort and learn a decent program, instead of using Tinkercad. I have been very happy with Tinkercad, but some things are only doable with workarounds or very creative methods.
The question is, what software should i start learning?
-FreeCAD
-Fusion 360
-AutoCAD
-Sketchup
-Blender
-LibreCAD
-Something else entirely?
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I found fusion360 and blender to be best for me. Fusion made by same company as tinkercad.
I tried freeCAD and had constant errors (like 20 at a time) and couldn’t figure out what was going on even tried googling. And that’s when I learned that’s just how it goes with that program.
I like blender to make sculpted models. Tutorials and figuring things out myself was frustrating but now I have a decent grasp on the basics and I find it much easier to use and keep learning new things all the time with it.
I’ve only used fusion for a few projects that required it and had to rely a lot on tutorial videos but I was able to do the modeling. I plan to learn more of it in the future but it’s pretty decent so far.
I’ve not used any of the others you have listed.
Just mashing together shape primitives and Thingiverse parts in TinkerCAD is entirely underrated. It’s still primarily what I use unless I need particularly curvy corner.
Fusion360 and FreeCAD are the CAD versions of Photoshop and GIMP (if Photoshop had a restricted free tier). They’re both trying to be a legit piece of CAD software, so there’s a bit of a learning curve coming from TinkerCAD. I found it easier to “feel my way around” Fusion360’s UI. FreeCAD has a layer of, “How did Open Source devs decide to be different here?” on top of learning something new.
Get on great with fusion 360. No cost, works well on expiry and import to slicer, really can’t complain. As It’s also an Autodesk product, there may be similarities but I jumped straight in and haven’t used Tinker.
Fusion 360 is fantastic. It’s free for non-commercisl use. I’ve been using it for years and have zero complaints. It’s polished and powerful.
People complaining about it for ideological reasons have a point, but I disagree that it’s in some sort of “enshitification spiral”. It’s exactly as usable as it was 5 years ago. There are very few features locked behind a paywall, and they aren’t important to the average maker.
You can even use Fusion to run a CNC router. For free! With all the polish of commercial software.
Everyone I know at my local makerspace uses Fusion. I don’t know a single person who uses FreeCAD. A couple people use TinkerCAD. There’s a very large community of Fusion users and getting help is easy.
I am 100% in favor of FOSS. Give FreeCAD a try. I used it years ago because it had a plugin to make convolute gears with a couple of clicks. But don’t shy away from Fusion just because of all of the haters on here. Give it a try yourself. I think you’ll be impressed by what you get for free.
Fusion seems legit to me and it’s free for non commercial use. It seems more intuitive than other cad software though they all have a learning curve
Onshape should be at the top of that list. I use it both professionally and personally.
People get freaked out over the free tier data being public, but if you’ve ever tried searching for something that’s public you’d not worry.
