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One month ago, I didn't really know what 3D printing was. Yesterday, I designed in FreeCAD my first model and printed it. What an amazing experience. (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
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I still have no idea what I'm doing really. Just too determined to give up I guess, and it's been such fun. Anyway I made a guitar pedal light switch cover. Still a lot of work to do, and every time I look at FreeCAD the wrong way, the model breaks, but it's been a fun experience nonetheless.

On a side note, anybody have any idea why the face of the model is rough textured, while the foot switch on the lower half is flawless?

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[–] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

No idea why you're having issues 3d printing. I've never heard of FreeCAD. But curious if you've ever tried Blender? It's free, and really good for modeling stuff like this.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago

    Blender is the last thing I would recommend to someone making functional parts like that. Fusion 360 is probably a more intuitive leap from FreeCAD, or OnShape, which I wish I had learned instead of Fusion in the first place.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    I've been familiar with Blender for many years, at least by name, being a Linux nerd for probably half my life. Never really used it though, in truth I had to pick a cad software and that was available in the repositories lol. I do find a free CAD maddeningly frustrating to use though, so maybe I should check out blender too.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Blender is great for decorative/pretty stuff. CAD software is great for functional stuff as pointed out by others. It’s just so much easier to get accurate measurements and dimensions with CAD software compared to blender.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, Blender has two major limitations for mechanical-type parts:

    One, it's not parametric even with its CAD plugins, but whatever. If you're only designing one part or a small assembly, you can manage without parameters, and the basic act of "make something" is often easier and more intuitive with a direct modeler.

    Second, it's editing meshes only. For 3D printing, that's not really the end of the world, as Slicers only work with meshes anyway, but as you say it limits resolution and accuracy, and could mean you have a bad time if you wanted to get a better printer or leverage some other form of manufacturing. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's kind of like using Photoshop and only saving in JPG.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I would definitely give it a try, maybe a flavor of 3.6 since 4 just came out. But over the last 19 years it's really had some major improvements and works really well for a free software (relatively bug free) for what it is. Best of luck on your 3D printing journey!

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Blender, even with the CAD plug-in, does not have the dimensional precision required for real engineering modeling. The Blender UI is also even clunkier than FreeCAD in many ways.

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