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Design for 3D-Printing

(blog.rahix.de)
837 points q3k | 4 comments | 04 May 25 17:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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lawn ◴[04 May 25 18:17 UTC] No.43888379[source]▶
What an impressive looking article (I've only skimmed it so far).

I've been meaning to try my hand at CAD and designing models to print but I haven't quite made the jump.

One thing that has given me pause is a good CAD program for Linux, does anyone has any good tips for a complete Newbie where to begin?

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1. retrochameleon ◴[04 May 25 18:27 UTC] No.43888444[source]▶
I use FreeCAD, but it definitely leaves some UX refinement to be desired. There are a couple of web based options like OnShape that seem to work well, too.
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2. rekenaut ◴[04 May 25 18:35 UTC] No.43888500[source]▶
OnShape is great (we have been using it exclusively for a project over the past four months, the collaboration tools are phenomenal), but FreeCAD has made some fantastic progress over the past year. Some of the underlying technology problems have solved, and the UX has improved a lot with 1.0. The customization and scripting opportunities are also wonderful with FreeCAD. That said, if you’re coming over from Solidworks/NX/Inventor, as much as there are buggy parts of those, FreeCAD still has extremely frustrating workflows and buggy parts that you have to work around. It feels like it’s moving closer to Blender-like quality, but it still has a long road ahead of it.
3. nullc ◴[04 May 25 19:11 UTC] No.43888755[source]▶
All of Solidworks, Onshape, and Freecad have a very similar operating philosophy (I believe they're all based on the same backend engine). I used onshape for a while because I found freecad unusable but recent improvements solved most of those issues and now I prefer freecad.
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4. sho_hn ◴[05 May 25 02:19 UTC] No.43891410[source]▶
OnShape and SolidWorks use Parasolid, FreeCAD uses Open CASCADE.