this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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3DPrinting

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What are your favorite resources to recommend for beginners?

I'm wanting to get interested for doing a cyberdeck case, and/or custom cluster racks for Raspberry Pi's but any and all newbie resources would be appropriate for this question.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

The Free and Open Source Software options are FreeCAD and Blender. These are not trying to manipulate you in any way. You 100% own them, your products from them, and this can never be taken away from you.

I use FreeCAD for all of my designs. All CAD software has a substantial learning curve. There are 3 common modes of design. You can make parts: programmatically with OpenSCAD, like wooden building blocks/Lego's, or using 2d sketches and performing 3d operations like extruding and pocketing. FreeCAD can do all 3. Check the official documentation to get started, it is very high quality. The workbenches can be a bit confusing at first. If you want to do the building blocks style, learn to use the Part Workbench. If you want to do sketch based design, use the Part Design workbench. Don't worry about anything on any other workbenches, they are for advanced operations you do not need.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

While not open source, Fusion 360 has a free for personal use version if you are wanting a fairly easy to use CAD program. I had been using mostly Blender up until recently since learning how to use Fusion. I love being able to parameterize everything. Blender is awesome though in it's own right. I use both for making functional prints depending on what I'm trying to do. I tried FreeCAD, but it definitely has a bit more learning curve than Fusion.

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