Got my 3D printer up and running last night. Made a cute little piggy bank while I was asleep. Will be making some patterns for my foundry with it soon. Going to try my first model on it tonight. Made two logo models for my dad to use on his lumber mill.
Will those logos be cast? He has a commercial mill, Alaskan mill, other? They look classy. Nice design. Denis
Im going to cast them in aluminum. He and my brother have two small sawmills that they cut live edge lumber with mostly. They just sell locally and on FaceBook. They mainly just do it to keep dad busy.LOL
I use SolidWorks. I am looking for something different to use at home, but I just spoke to upper management today about using it at home and hope they will let me use it there. I think they are going to. I really would hate to try and learn something different and I could use it at home and learn much more about it. It has features I have never used that I would like to learn more about.
I did a deal with our solidworks provider to run the same license on two machines, the other being a high end laptop meaning I could work 24/7! That was a few years back now so things may have changed.
The old 2D drawing program that I’ve used for the past 30 years isn’t supported anymore, so I’m looking at a 3D upgrade. For a long time now I’ve done my technical drawings in 2D, then passed it over to my old chief engineer to model it in 3D. I think it’s about time that I got up to speed on 3D but I’m torn between going with SketchUp or Fusion 360. As the learning curve is quite steep, I only want to do it once so I want to be sure that I pick the right one first time. I’m leaning towards SketchUp but I’d welcome comments from people who know. Easy to learn would be good as I’m old and decrepit now.
I use older versions of sketchup and it does not do very well generating solid stl files. It works for roughing out cabinet project but has let me down on 3d printing projects. Other folks agree: https://hatoum.com/blog/2018/2/6/dont-use-sketchup-for-3d-printed-designs If you can learn Fusion 360, do that instead. I still use 123D Design but I cannot recommend it as its no longer supported.
Thanks for that Mach, having read Hatoum’s blog, you might just have saved me making the wrong choice. I did have a brief look at Tinkercad, but the guy doing the tutorial was a bit of a flake, I just couldn’t get along with him so gave it a miss. I’ll go a bit deeper into Fusion 360. Jim
I use Fusion360, it's free for non-commercial use. It's a little tough getting started but has a lot of great features. I'm really slow with text and can't always get it to put draft on text. But I'm only 71 and have lots of time to learn more.
I tried out alibre this weekend and like it alot. It is very similar to SolidWorks so it was very easy for me to learn how to use it. I am just using the free trial but think I will stick with it. I use cura for 3d splicing and it is really easy and works great too!
Its somewhat similar, just easier to learn. You can think of what you want to do, then just find the icon to do it. I do alot of work in assembly mode. This is especially handy for making patterns that are cored. You can design the cores first keeping them in their relative positions (saving individual cores as separate files) then model the casting and either subtract the cores making the finished casting or assemble the cores into the part model creating the pattern. The different cores and parts can have different colors and transparency to give you an excellent visual representation.