the best software to design 3d print

[Avi]

hey guy's,
i'm really new to this and was wondering what in your opinion would be the best program to use in order to design stuff.
thanks

[Polygonhell]

hey guy's,
i'm really new to this and was wondering what in your opinion would be the best program to use in order to design stuff.
thanks

Depends what you want to design, how technical you are and what you want to spend.
On the parametric CAD front you have
Solidworks is my personal favorite, and it's what i would like to use, but it's $5000+ if you can't get an educational license and can't get a personal use license because you use it at work.
Alibre isn't bad for the cost.
OpenSCAD is free and is my goto package for anything simple, but if you think writing software is hard you'll hate it.
If you prefer the direct modeling approach then there is VIA CAD, Blender, Inventor etc etc.

My personal view is parametric is the only way to go, but I know a lot of artists who would disagree with me.

[MorbidSlowBurn]

I agree with polygonhell's post. It really depends on what you intend on doing and if you have experience with 3D modeling.

If you are doing engineering type parts where dimensions and part design are critical you want to go with a parametric program such as Solidworks, OpenCAD, ...

If the items are more abstract/artistic you will want to use a program like Blender.

Which one you choose is completely up to you based on experience and cost.

[johnyac]

I'm a new user to CAD, started in late December.

In December I stumbled into Cubity Invent, a striped down version of Alibre/Geomajic's personnel edition. Got lucky and got a free 30day trial. First time any CAD software outside of Tinkercad I actually understood with some tutorials/blog. http://cubify.com/products/cubify_invent/

The blog by Tom Meeks has some excellent tutorials that kick-started me into Cubify Invent.
http://cubifyfans.blogspot.com/

Although Invent is $49.00, I went for Alibre/Geo's Personnel Addition for $200.00. I really wanted to be able to do assemblies, invent can only do one part at a time.

Now, just need to buy a printer.

[Jimustanguitar]

I've been using Google Sketchup lately. My formal training is with Inventor (about 10 years ago), but I like the free/open-source philosophy for 3D printing. Sketchup is trying to poise itself for the 3D printing market, and they've got a few plugins for STL files and repairing models.

There's also tinkercad (recently acquired and revived by autodesk).
Autodesk 123D is another option.
Freecad is another option.


I'd love to see an extensive list of the different free options (I'm sure there are dozens) so that I could compare them. Any good shootout articles or reviews that you know of?

[Jimustanguitar]

I read about this on my lunch hour, and I'm actually pretty excited about the Open CASCADE part of FreeCad.

Does anybody use this software already?

[jmick]

Has anyone tried Rhino 5 ? I was looking at it and it seems like it may be better than the others it even repairs STL files.



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