>>993073
which CAD software should I invest my time in?

>>993073
Plasccity trial expired can't use it anymore, I feel sad

I actually did some stuff in FreeCAD with zero CAD knowledge. I hit a lot of bugs but it did work.

>>993112
How could you be so sure they were bugs if you entirely lacked any prior knowledge?

>>993073
For me, it's Autodesk Inventor with 30% extra session crashing.

>>993237
>shit crashes
>shit explodes (constraint solver finding a solution that's not a solution)

>>993073
Tried 123design it's shit

>>993102
Once you trial it that's it, developers made s tier security and it's uncrackable

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Freecad is a weird combination of totally usable and frustratingly limiting. I am able to design most of what I need (fairly simple stuff though) but as soon as I try to do something in an order it doesn't like, the whole thing crashes. Will be nice in 5-10 years I think.

>solidworks simulation
>solution goes to 80% in 10 minutes
>sits there for the next 5 hours going back and forth between 3 and 17 gigs of ram
>"Study failed"
Every problem involving contact interactions has been a pain so far. I'm not even mad anymore.

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cadurday edition

>>993073
>>993287
nothing is uncrackable, he just paid crackers not to crack it

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As an outsider I HATE 3d software.
Why do I need to install some arcane software whos GUI is build by fucking brain damaged people to do one fucking thing?
In this case engraved text on a curved surface.

Why can't these fuckwits make even importing models intuitive?
I made this in autocad btw and want text on the curved recess.
I'm attempting to use inventor but this shit is maddening.

>>993097
fucking none. learn a trade instead because shit is built by fucking twisted retards.
Autocad is ok

>want to insert a file into current document?
Hit OPEN. WTF fucking zoomer devs you total Cumbrians
>imported asset
>puts it in an asset tab with no visible way of importing into main workspace
I will murder on sight any 3D software dev I meet
Meltie over for now

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I hate the antichrist

>>993587
I've managed to make a few things with freecad with it being the only cad software I've used. But it seema like I can never continue working on a saved project once it has been closed and reopened, nothing ever works again. I have to treat it like an 8bit videogame and complete it in one sitting.

It is incredibly satisfying when you actually get that cumbersome hunk of shit to make something slick though.

I feel bad for people who don't use Catia

>>993097
for me rhino, expensive as hell but easy to get around if you willing to renew the 3 month demo version with a different email each time lmao

>>993287
>>993745
I can crack it if you pay me.

>>994424
how much do you want?

>>993705
I deal with SW Simulation as a job, and I hate it with a passion, I tried asking management to get an Ansys license to no avail because it costs too much and there's not enough demand.
Going back to SW Simulation, first off the progress bars mean nothing, seriously, they barely qualify as vague suggestions. Secondly if your simulation runs for 5 hours and then fails you've got a stupid fine mesh while the analysis isn't properly modeled. Try with a VERY coarse mesh first, see if it runs, see if the results make sense; then, when you know it runs, use a finer mesh or, better, add mesh controls on the surfaces and edges you want to see in more detail.
If it fails, well I got a whole spreadsheet of errors and failures, full of possible causes and possible solutions, so I can't help you there without more informations.
To be clear, solve time doesn't mean the simulation is fucked, I had simulation run for 25 hours (it was an entire electric motor for an e-bike) and produce good results, but it all comes down to what you're analyzing and how you set up the simulation.

I'm going to use Blender to do CAD work again because learning another software is a pain

>>993792
Texturing with a displacement map would be way easier. You don't really see this type of process in real life machining because it's extremely complicated to perform.

>>994663
Not sure, it's an electron app LMAO.

>>994671
I need to do this to because converting files between programs is making me ultra-violent.
How hard is it to align objects? This is the most basic function I need speaking as the autoCAD psycho above.
It’s so unintuitive but I just want to zero in any shape I make and move by integer on an axis. That’s it.

Now every time I add a bolt connector in sw simulation the document units switch to meters. What the actual fuck. Every default I'm aware of is set to mm.

>>994667
In my experience coarse mesh fails the study more often than not, or at least yields questionable results. Fine mesh not so much aside from when solution takes so much time that I get tired of waiting and cancel it myself.
In that particular case the issue was probably parts slipping against each other under load (it was actually the point of study to see if they will), but instead of prompting about large displacement like usual, the solver decided to bug out for some reason.

>>995022
>every time I add a bolt connector in sw simulation the document units switch to meters
That's a new one.
>coarse mesh fails the study more often than not
Not to backpedal, but I meant "coarse" in a relative way, which is always dependant on the problem at hand. In any way, a failure after 5 hours is usually a symptom of bad modeling and mesh issues. Ideally you want that failure to happen much faster so you can troubleshoot your mesh (check for high aspect ratio elements, negative jacobian, shit base geometries, etc) more efficiently.
>parts slipping
Conctact analysis is a bitch in SW, getting it to behave requires esoteric knowledge not even Dassault has. Be mindful about the sleazy trick SW plays on us every time you mess with the model and then go back to the simulation: it may automatically switch the contact between faces you had previously defined to a self-contact, which usually doesn't work when you have two different bodies. I have wasted DAYS of machine time on this shit, fucking hell. Also, if you're studying slipping I assume you set a proper friction coefficient, but keep in mind SW doesn't like very high coefficients, and on the other side of the spectrum it won't go below 0,05.

Also, what's your usual node count? My workstation at the office is a somewhat recent Xeon with 128GB of ECC memory and a proper nvme drive, and I try staying below 3~4 million nodes at most (an analysis like that takes from 10 to 25 hours), and below 1 million if I can help it, with running times in the order of 4~8 hours; less than 500 thousand if I want something to shit out results within the day; if the problem allows it, I can use less than 200 thousand nodes if I want it to finish in a matter of minutes.

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>>994663
$120, the code is compiled using bytenode, it's hard to decompile and the file seems to have an extra layer of obfuscation on the top.

>>995037
>a symptom of bad modeling and mesh issues
For one, that model had lots of unnecessary details that now that I think about it could be simplified or cut out altogether.

>it may automatically switch the contact between faces you had previously defined to a self-contact
Ah so that's what it was. I had a really cursed study a while ago where either some contacts would fall through each other for no obvious reason, or the study would fail due to "numerical difficulties". That's what probably was happening. Good to know.

>keep in mind SW doesn't like very high coefficients
The real coefficient would be at least 0.3, and the max 0.2 sw takes without complaints should've been just barely enough in theory (under the assumption of uniform contact pressure - which it isn't, hence the study) so the idea was that if 0.2 will work then the real thing will work even better.

>Also, what's your usual node count?
I don't really pay attention to that. I usually just tune mesh size by feel depending on how much time I'm willing to spend on it. Solution time can vary wildly depending on number of contacts and how well the model behaves after all. The study right now with 750k nodes, with every contact that have to watch out enabled just finished in 4.5 hours. With only essential contacts that move by design it takes 1h 40 min. With everything bonded it finishes in under 7 minutes. I'm running it on i5-12400, in a VM with 24 Gb of ram.
When I'm just fiddling with stuff I usually try to keep the solution time under half an hour, and only run longer studies when I want to verify the final design that I'm reasonably sure I won't have to fix and run again.

any fusion chads here? also i write websites in php and use an iphone. feels good to get paid and watch you nerds squeal over tools lmao

>>993705
>>994667
Have you tried Catia V5? I have an old R20 somewhere.
The V5 is the standard for Airbus and our aviation business overall.
SW is honorable but it's not as powerful.

>>995164
How do i contact you?

>>995885
>>994667 here. I work in a studio, we have all the softwares so whatever our client has, we can work with it too. I've seen CATIA, but never used it. UI is shit, and that's pretty much all I can say about it. As for the "powerful", I think it all comes down to handling large assemblies with millions of components and integration with a robust PDM that might set it apart from everything else. As for actually modeling in it, I don't know, but one of the good thing about SW is that being so widespread there's always something online that will help you learn or solve a situation, while the same can't be said about CATIA. In the end all CAD work pretty much the same (more or less). Just today I was reading SW2025 highlights and my impression is that DS is doing basically the absolute bare minimum to keep all these softwares afloat, because SW works like absolute ass, but the features and fixes are so few and far in between to be laughable. Also, unless you work in some massive corporation that does massive projects it's infinitely more likely for you to encounter SW than CATIA.

>>995886
What os?

Plasticity user here. How can I start learning to make AAA quality firearms? I know modeling in general fairly well but guns have been quite difficult for me in CAD software. Any good pirated courses? What guns should I create as a beginner?

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Is there a CAD package that
>is cheapish (max $500/yr, inb4 pirate)
>has parameters that integrate with Google Sheets/Excel
>has text parameters that can be imported to a model/2d geometry
>has g-code export (not a need, but a nice to have)

I want to do a little sign business out of my garage. Ideally I would have products that are customizable without having to go in and change the model with each iteration.

I want to be able to put Basic Girl's(tm) last name/family motto/marriage date w/e into a spreadsheet and have a router table shit out

"(Basic Girl Name) and (Basic Guy Name) married (year) at (stupid town they live in)"

or w/e.

I use Inventor at work, string parameters are abhorrent. I have to do a work around to import text parameters from excel. It's also more than I need for mostly 2d signs.

Let's talk CAD!

for me, it's IronCAD. The tri-ball is GOAT

>>998446
alibre, probably.

>>998615
>>998446

Just mucked around with it a bit - they don't do the integration I need.

Currently I have to use an iPart in inventor, and then edit the iPart table in Excel since you cannot populate the regular parameter table with strings from Excel.

I am sure this functionality exists somewhere - how many part configs have different things engraved in them? Surely they don't expect engineers to manually change the engraving for each different part iteration.
wan00

>>994890
>How hard is it to align objects?
It's possible, the features are there, but it's very tedious to do in default Blender without addons

>>998636
yeah I think you have to script it in python
https://www.alibre.com/3d-cad-scripting/

>>998446
Inkscape is easy enough to script. The gcodetools plugin might suitable.

>>993783
The absolute worst take possible.
>>998446
Rhino has UserText on every object that you can export as CSV.
In fact I can recommend Rhino to everyone in this thread. One-time payment, no bs subscriptions, not gonna change, whatever you can't do in Rhino, you can do with the Grasshopper plugin, whatever you can't do with Grasshopper, you can do with someone else's extensions to it or write your own.

.t currently creating a factory control system using it, from 3d models to CAM auto-programming, part tracking, management and customer relations.

>>994379
I think this method doesn't work anymore.

>>1000881
>.t currently creating a factory control system using it, from 3d models to CAM auto-programming, part tracking, management and customer relations.
Very based. What kind of parts will be manufactured?

>>1000881
>>1001040
Buy an ad

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>>1001059
>unironically thinking an entrepreneur is going to do his self-promotion on /3/ where 99% of posters here are learning to make 3D tits and anuses on Blender.
I think we are only two on this thread to use Rhino professionally and he seems clearly better than me so I'm curious what could be done with it.
inb4. phoneposting

There was a thread on /g/ a few weeks ago that said Freecad 1.0 was actually pretty good now. I just tested it. It's still shit.

>>993073
does anyone have good tuts on manually building surface for G2 tolerance?

i tried to get into that shit half a decade ago but between a shit work environment and my own incompetence i bounced off it. thinking about giving it another try, there are a lot of jobs in my area that pay well if i can wrap my head around it

to be clear, not B side or engineering, but for organic sheet surface, like auto industry standard tolerance

also whats the industry standard software these days? catia? we were using alias, how well does that knowledge translate?

>>1001094
go on /g/, apple shills are everywhere. The fact that you don't believe that a small startup wouldn't shill their products when a massive marketing agency like apple does confirms that you're a shill.

>>1001103
>G2 tolerance
Tolerances are a specification on a technical drawing, not something you bake in your 3D model. They're an indication for manufacturing.
>industry standard software
All of them. If you have to learn from scratch I'd say start with Solidworks which is widely used, easy to learn, and has you have an infinite amount of online resources at your disposal to learn from and troubleshoot any issue you might have. Alternatively I can recommend Onshape (same company behind Creo), which is browser-based, free2play, and very very modern. In the end all parametric CAD softwares share the same core principles, just different UI/shortcuts/gestures.

>>996273
did you buy or pirate?

>>1001243
nice try, fed

freecad doesnt let you preview anything. you have to know the exact value ahead of time and put them in the left panel instead of a pop up box its also butt ugly. no smooth animation when switching angles. you have to dig through its terrible ux/ui just to change the grid values.
its not a decent alternative specially considering fusion 360 is free.
if you insist on using linyx exclusively then use ondhape atleast.
the only viable way to use freecad is by cutting primitives with the modifier.
dont get me wrong all cad software has clunky gimp tier ux ui but freecad is just the worst.
why cant i scale a segment or a shape in fusion 360 for example. why cant i fillet after using patch? why is the measuribg tool such shit when its so important.

>>998446
OpenSCAD ?

>>998446
theres a 3d printer plugin for fusion 360 not sure how good it is