I’m currently getting by with a mixture of Design Spark Mechanical, FreeCAD, and OpenSCAD for prototyping/editing files, I’d love to find a good alternative that isn’t from a predatory company like Autodesk
Coming from a programming background, I love OpenSCAD. It’s just simple enough that I think I can easily do what I want, and powerful enough that I can do anything with it.
Unfortunately it’s usually more difficult than I expected, and when you start using nested loops to define polyhedron vertices, you should probably be using other software.The main thing I love about it is the ability to define global constants that can be changed later. If done correctly, you can design a part first and take measurements later.
I’ve used Onshape a bit and it is nice. Free accounts files are posted publicly, but to me that isn’t a huge deal.
I personally use Alibre Design Pro and Moi3D. Both are bought outright without subscriptions and seem to have a decent community if small, mostly on their respective forums. I went through the basic PDF tutorial that Alibre has and it gave me enough confidence to build so semi advanced stuff. Moi3d does have a bit more videos and tutorials than Alibre.
I want to use Plasticity3D more, but it lacks easily editable features after they are generated, but it’s decent for iterating or playing with a design. Seems if you need a 3d object without precision, it’s decent and easy workflow.
I use the RealThunder branch of FreeCAD because I didn’t like the boiling-the-frog changes that were being made to the free tier of Fusion 360. It is already good enough for my needs, and new features are getting added frequently, e.g. an offset tool for sketches and the ability to select regions on faces to extrude.
I’m currently using OnShape (free edition) and to be honest, I love it. On the rare occasions where I have no clue how achieve something it’s very easy to find too many videos showing the how.
I would like give Fusion 360 a “proper” try but each time I load it up and then look at the limitations, I just get put off.
I’m not sure that even if I had the money I’d pay for OnShape. AutoDesk have great products but I find it very difficult to like them and their view of hobbyists.
I’ve mostly switched from Fusion to Onshape. Fusion does have features Onshape doesn’t have, but most of them are beyond the needs of someome designing models for 3D printing.
Onshape seems to respect their users, and Autodesk treats you like shit. Fusion has all sorts of logic errors that cause it to perform terribly or crash. And it still has all sorts of weird DPI display issues.
So, I corroborate your impressions. I don’t think you have to give Fusion a fair shake, your impression is spot-on.
Definitely fusion. I had no trouble learning fusion with no tutorials for the basics. ie draw, extrude etc. I loaded up freeCad yesterday and had no idea what to do. this is my current little project designed in fusion.
I really liked fusion360 the only problem is they keep changing licensing. All of my experience is as a hobbyist so it really is a pain when they cripple my cnc or limit the number of projects. Who knows they might start charging for colors or something crazy like Adobe.
I wish i would have started with onshape or freecad. Also I think solidworks is extremely discounted for EAA members
totally agree. I do my hobby work under a work funded fusion account. If I didn’t have paid fusion, I’d probably persevere with freecad or use onshape. I liked using onshape - it’s pretty similar to fusion from my experience. I haven’t tried tinkercad yet. TBF the charging for colours was a pantone thing. What shits me with fusion is if you want to render an animation you still have to pay for it to be rendered in the cloud even with a paid subscription. use case is pretty limited but it would be a nice thing to play around with, especially given most home computers are more than powerful enough to render at home.
Onshape is really not hard to pick up coming from Fusion 360
