Can’t even take a short break from 3D designing stuff. Glad I’m switching over to FreeCAD. All I wanted was to grab some dimensions from an old model.

  • N3Cr0
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    749 months ago

    Almost the same situation here. However, my first designs in freeCAD had lots of errors and I experienced lots of crashes and bugs. Didn’t really get into it.

    My tool of choice is now OpenSCAD. It does exactly what you are designing - not more, not less.

    • @[email protected]
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      329 months ago

      While OpenSCAD is amazing, it is limited in some ways. It is also very marmite-like. You either love it or hate it.

      For those confused, OpenSCAD is a scripted CAD package. You effectively write code, rather than dragging the mouse around. I personally love it, but I know others who absolutely hate it for the same reasons. It depends a LOT on how you think about problems.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      269 months ago

      I might take a look - the learning curve on FreeCAD is pretty steep. Not that I wouldn’t expect any other CAD to be much easier, but I feel there’s a lot of assumed knowledge about concepts that appear to be unique to FreeCAD. Kinda increases the study load, if you catch my drift.

      • fmstrat
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        99 months ago

        FreeCAD has an OpenSCAD plugin. Personally, I’d stick with FreeCAD regardless of workflow since you can do both in it. It has its quirks, but once you get used to it, it’s great.

      • @[email protected]
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        49 months ago

        Check out the Adventures in Creation YT (or Piped) channel. He does a very exhaustive set of tutorials from beginner to advanced that is well produced and explained.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          19 months ago

          Thanks for that. One of the things that really helped me start using F360 was the 3x20min videos made by Lars Christensen. Looking at the channel you’ve just recommended, he appears to have done something very similar. I’ll enjoy working through those. Cheers!

    • @[email protected]
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      59 months ago

      Fellow OpenSCAD user here. I’d recommend it to anyone as a thing to try, but not necessarily as a thing to certainly end up using.

      I love how much control it gives you over your designs and how you can use that to make intelligently parametric parts. I’m continuously frustrated by how it expects you to make (or find libraries for) everything from scratch. For example, I’ve recently discovered ClosePoints which is (a) brilliant and (b) makes me wonder why the heck this functionality isn’t built-in or at least in a default library. I’ve also found that using it for anything complicated has forced me to learn how to write better-organized code.

      You still have to put in work to learn how to use it. It’s just a different kind of work.

    • @[email protected]
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      39 months ago

      If it’s somehow possible to code up my design In OpenSCAD, it’s infinitely more preferable over FreeCAD