I run a 3d printer for fun. I need 3d modeling software to go with it. The two work together.
I make things which never before existed. Even if it’s just a sawhorse jig it’s something I created. Evil cannot create. Good loves to create. That’s a key to understanding life!
A year and a half ago I picked Autodesk Fusion 360 more or less at random for my 3d modeling software. Technically I’m using “Autodesk Fusion 360 For Personal Use”. It’s massive overkill but that’s where I landed after escaping analysis paralysis.
I suffered through the learning curve. Brutal! But I was more or less happy with the software.
My use is well within the “free” personal use category. I’d be willing to upgrade if they had a cheap low end variant. They don’t. Pricing goes from zero to nosebleed in the blink of an eye.
They don’t want small fry like me. They’ve got Microsoft syndrome… chasing offices and schools and “business to business” until they’re intolerable for a normal human. I consider this a red flag. The company either is or wants to be a ward of the State; ask Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin about their consumer divisions.
I soon encountered another complaint. It’s ridiculously cloud based. It’s an absolute bitch if my internet slows (which was happening with some frequency). I’d do something that shouldn’t be hard, like draft a circle, and the whole system would creak like a Soviet field commander dealing with a mandatory meeting of commissars to discuss the monthly toilet paper ration. Drawing a circle does not need to be cloud based!
I was still willing to put up with it. I even updated my broadband with Starlink.
Meanwhile, Microsoft (the ultimate planetary enshittification kings!) phased out Win10. My hardware can’t easily upgrade and more importantly I don’t want to upgrade to WinEnshittify. I don’t need or want anything new from Microsoft but Fusion 360 seems addicted to it for no clear reason. It started whining that my OS was “out of date”. This had no affect on anything; just a warning that warned me about nothing. I got a Mac laptop running as a backup and tried that. It worked fine with Fusion 360 but didn’t fix my underlying situation.
Mac is just like Win, in both instances my hardware is limited to an unsupported OS level. I got a Linux box running but Fusion 360 (with some caveats) is allergic to Linux. I’m not sure why. Fusion 360 is so cloud based it shouldn’t matter how I’m logging on. But… enshittify.
I’ve been busy with real life. I’m not using Fusion 360 much lately. I just started a very simple little project. So of course just now it needed an urgent software upgrade. Predictably the upgrade was convoluted and annoying. Why? Enshittification.
Meanwhile, other parts of the world seem intent on sucking. I keep reading news that Washington State, or perhaps New York, or some other ninnies out there are trying to get their nose into the 3d tent. They’ve been trying to regulate 3d printing since it was invented, as if every machine shop in every town can’t do the equivalent in metal. People who don’t own a drill press have opinions. They don’t like the peasants having 3d printers. Honestly they don’t like peasants having cars, hobbies, families, religion, or fun either. The current general idea is that a magic unicorn verification system will scan all print files lest a printer do crimethink. Sooner or later one of these nimrods will succeed in their unworkable bullshit. Of course they’ll also kneecap their own State’s industry but that never bothers a commie. To commies, failure isn’t just an option, it’s the goal. Look what they’ve done to education.
Putting aside concerns over civil liberties, it’s a huge foolish hassle. Running all files past a grand inquisitor which doesn’t yet exist and probably never will is just plain unworkable. Software will never truly be able to identify if my home designed combination flower pot and carburetor wash basin with add on sexual toy and D&D barbarian mini-fig is or is not crimethink. The ill defined limits of what the hopeless subject is allowed by his overlords is not a solvable geometry problem.
You can’t censor a tool’s ability to do stupid shit and still preserve it’s ability to do useful shit. People who use tools know this. People who can’t do real world things don’t care what they’re doing when they nuke their own societies capabilities. Sorry folks, you can’t auto-detect a CNC machine or a 3d Printer into harmlessness any more than you can detect an equation in a spreadsheet cell and decide its moral content.
None of this hypothetical regulation should affect me. I make simple things like sawhorses in a State that hasn’t (yet?) gone full retard. But Fusion 360 is hopelessly cloud based and some of their customers are in prison states… so then what. Surely there will be some sort of hoop jumping to determine who is and who isn’t within that state; even if it’s just to disallow export to 3d machines for beings of lesser rights. Who knows where it’ll go?
I don’t want to deal with it. The software is already making itself annoying. It’s not inconceivable a cloud based system will eventually bend over and let my designs get probed. If some dweeb in New York thinks my diy trekking pole handle looks like a trigger, I’ll have a whole different level of enshittification.
Time to adapt.
So here I am, downloading new and different software. All because Fusion 360 couldn’t keep it in its pants and neither can government. I predict more bullshit in the future so I might as well switch to local and Linux now. I don’t want to relearn new software but such is the invisible tax of enshittification.
Wish me luck finding something new to run locally on my computer without a Microsoft upgrade. I hope the learning curve isn’t so hard the second time.
A.C.
FreeCAD is finally to the point where you can do most things you’d want without clawing your eyeballs out in frustration, though still not as good as fusion or solidworks. On the plus side it runs on Linux too. Might work for you.
I like your thinking. I’ve been experimenting with freeCAD. I can’t say if I like it or hate it yet but I’ve only used it a few hours so far.
It seems capable of doing anything I want but the sketch system keeps derailing me. I draft a line or a circle or whatever and I never seem to have it fully constrained. There’s all ways some “hole in the wire”. I’m hoping that’s just a learning curve thing?
On the positive side it was super easy to install and runs faster than Fusion because it’s just doing stuff locally and not outsourced to God knows where. It also seems to export bodies to my slicer fairly painlessly so that’s nice. I haven’t exported anything too complex though so that might change.
I’m in the same boat, I bought a Flashforge Adventurer 5M Pro last November. I primarily live in Linuxland and have successfully modeled a few things in TinkerCAD. I have FreeCAD installed, but between the menu fonts and my 60 year old eyes I’m stuggling.
I think the interface of FreeCAD isn’t quite as easy on the eyes as Fusion 360… but I also think that’s the “default setting”. I’m already messing around with font and line settings to make it a little easier to see. Big monitors are cheap nowadays (mine is not massive but it’s not a small laptop screen either) so I’m going to “waste” a little screen real estate and see if that helps.
I’ve never even considered (or really heard of) TinkerCAD. The good news is we have a plethora of options.
I hope you can get FreeCad to work! A couple of your earlier posts about 3D printing a replacement piece for your flagpole got me to finally get up and acquire a 3D printer- I, too, had been struggling with analysis paralysis. (I got the Bambu Labs P1S rather than what you had). I tried Fusion360 since I saw you were using it, but I had troubles (some like yours, and others) and have since invested my learning efforts into FreeCAD. My interest is also one of just because it’s neat and I want to be able to design and make whatever things for household and hobby use. And for more maybe, if my skills get there.
Anyway, I think you can do pretty much anything you can think of with FreeCAD. For what it’s worth.
Tom from East Tennessee
Thanks, I’ve only been tinkering with FreeCAD a couple days. I think the only limitation is getting over the learning curve. (I’ll bet when all is said and done, it’s easier to learn than Fusion 360.)
BTW: The flagpole part is still holding strong!
I went from windows 7 to Linux Mint. I do admit that I miss Windows 7 but am doing ok with Mint. I have also been looking at FreeCad. My mind is not like a sponge anymore, so not doing real good with it. Thanks for your adventures, Don.
Suggest making sure you’re on the latest version (should be 1.1.1). Anything other than 1.x.x is from before they fixed (well, mostly fixed) the topo-naming problem and is not worth the hassle. Constraints seem to be working as expected for me; could be a learning curve issue as you said. The sketch geometry should turn green when fully constrained; if it’s white you’ve got something spatio suspensus.
I haven’t migrated from Fusion yet and probably will never fully do so; have years of designs that would have to be re-done and life’s too short. Not to mention what I have in Solidworks from the day job.
One more option is Siemens Solid Edge. They offer a personal use version that works on your local machine. It’s fine (roughly on par-ish with fusion and/or solidworks), but does not work on linux like freecad does.
There’s also a bunch of non parametric options. Blender, in particular, is worth learning for free-form non-parametric stuff.
I’m running 1.1.1. It’s too early to tell if it sucks or I’m dumb and will catch on after some practice. As any man ought, I just installed it and started trying to make an object with a real world purpose without the slightest clue what I’m doing. I think I need to tweak the display settings so the lines are thicker and display with more obvious colors. That might help immensely.
AC,
Please tell me more about your 3D printer.
I have a 13 year old son who is interested in getting a printer and making things (for whatever value of things a teenage boy defines.). I know less than diddly about the machines and suffer analysis paralysis over electronic do dads. I can and do build whatever I want with wood, and cabinetry for customers. I can even fab simple stuff with metal. Melting plastic into shapes with CAD is just beyond my willpower, so I am not much help to the boy.
Please set me on a path to learn what to throw money at so the boy can make stuff with melty plastic, metal infused melty plastic, and electronic do dads.
I had so much fun thinking about your question that I wrote a huge post all about it. It’ll go live tomorrow.
P.S. Cabinets and wood and stuff is cool, but if your son takes to 3d printing he might someday surprise you how much he can do.
I’m a bit late to the comments but for all trying to learn Freecad, I have a suggestion.
I used Sketchup for about 10 years, first for design drawings then for 3D printing. Excellent but 2017 was the last free version that was not cloud based. I tried several others, including blender before finding Freecad.
As several have mentioned, there is somewhat of a learning curve. As I always do, I went to YouTube for help. Lots and lots of videos. Some good, some bad, many useful. Until I found MangoJelly https://www.youtube.com/@MangoJellySolutions
He has step by step, starting with how to install and set preferences, videos. Most 20-30 minutes long showing how to model increasingly complex parts. He may be up to 100 videos now.
Best tutorials EVER on YouTube on any subject.
I learned Freecad by putting him on one screen, FC on the main, then drawing the model in each lesson following him. Lots of starting and stopping and back and forthing but I was able to do everyting he did and I eventually understood how and why he did it.