TLDR = what’s a good next step after kid-friendly 3d creation tools?
Solved = Fusion360 is voted as winner, we even got a nice tutorial playlist.
Hi all - I’m still very much a new user. Highly skilled in IT but just getting my feet wet in 3D printing, since a month or so. I love the possibilities! I can physically create anything I can image, it’s amazing.
So far, I’ve used mostly TinkerCad and done lots with it. The learning curve is practically non-existent, and it has sufficient features to do a lot.
But of course it’s not perfect. Obvious example: can’t do fillets, except in roundabout ways using negative blocks.
I’ve tried OnShape, OpenScad, Fusion 360, but found them quite a steep hill to climb.
Are these good choices, or is there something in-between that would make it easier for me to advance?
Fusion 360 is the middle ground. Beyond that you’re looking at solidworks.
It is just a steep learning curve. Keep grinding. The thing about steep learning curves is that it’s more rewarding when you make progress.
Fusion360 is great.
The two things I dislike about it though is the lack of linux support and the fact that you have to store your projects in their cloud. Personally I would prefer local only projects which I can easily include in a git repository without having to manually export my model every time I make a change to it.
So far FreeCad seems like the best option for me in regards to those points but it is definitely less intuitive than Fusion360
I only use freecad and it sucks. But it’s not infested with corporate bullshit like cloud saves, so it’s automatically better than fusion 360.
doesn’t have Linux support, but Solid Edge community let’s you save locally.
From what I read, the free tier only allows to save 10 models, total, ever, then I’d need a paid version. Is that accurate?
No you can only have 10 read/write models at the same time but as far as I found you can store as many read-only models as you want and you can toggle them back and forth. Also, you also can store the files locally, or at least export them to a local fusion file.