I design stuff with Blender for 3d-printing. Lately a friend asked me to design some mechanical parts for printing and I realized Blender isn't suitable for this, because when you apply a subdivision modifier, all the dimensions change because the geometry gets deformed. I was going to learn freecad but i watched some people doing stuff with it on youtube and every time i watch a video i say to myself "i could model this in Blender in like half the time." is this the nature of CAD modeling, or is this specific to freecad?
I primarily use freecadit's shit but it works kind ofI used solidworks as a studentone thing you could do is export the stl from blender for the organic part and put it into freecad (gotta do the whole solid from mesh thing etc), and cad the part with important dimensions in freecad, then just overlap them by position and export both as stl (you don't even need to boolean union them as ive found out, which just crashes freecad sometimes), it will meld them together in the exportI've done stuff like export stl from freecad, then resize holes or features with just vertex selection and scale in blender because that shit would take way too long in freecad, like I need this tool holder that was designed for a 3 inch cylinder thing to hold a 2.5 inch cylinder thingalternatively I think Autodesk has some free cad thing
also regarding the speed, if you need to define every single dimension and angle etc then of course it will take longersomething that might help is you don't actually need to have your sketches fully constrained, I constrain some important shit but then just eyeball other non critical stuff all the time. You could even just zoom thefuck in and try to match reference shapes or other parts in the model whatever in Ortho mode instead of measuring and dimensioning
>>2957375Solidworks has a pretty decent hobby license price
>>2957412>Paying for a solidworks license for hobby useGo lurk /t/ for a bit, and let those weirdos talk some sense into you.
>>2957411As someone who's done a lot of CAD work, don't listen to this guy. Get in the habit of making sure everything is fully defined. Even if the dimensions are arbitrary, make sure it's set to something. Over time it teaches you a good workflow, and how to logically draft your parts in a way that makes sense, and makes it easy to make changes if need be. Especially if you're dealing with multi-part assemblies, you'll thank me later.
>>2957459To be fair, it's $50 a year and you get full fat, tier 3 Solidworks.
>>2957375Free cad just kinda sucks If it was a paid software and not the only option nobody would use it Like if autodesk said fuck it and made fusion360 freeware for life free cad would die overnight
>>2957497No onentrusts auto desk to not fuck fusion 360 again. Even if they did what you said we're all still sore from the previousbupdates that fucked iwould rather just pirate a3d then keep gett9ngnfucked by f360 which was written by the B team anyway
>>2957375Get Solid Edge community edition. It's free and has full functionality. The only limit is that it prints watermark on printed drawings.
>>2957375Something you haven't realized because you haven't had to prototype before; CAD software is parametric (you can make changes to the various dimensions of the model without having to completely remake it). It might take longer to model, but going back and making (sometimes expected, sometimes not) tweaks is much faster (because you're not having to start from scratch).>>2957461This 1000%. Freecad in particular sort of forces you into this mindset; sketches generally won't resolve into anything useful unless all the dimensions are defined.
>>2957517tf are you on about I pad/pocket/loft/sweep/revolve etc just fine without full constraints I've made plenty of useful designs for 3d printing that just werk⢠this wayyou guys can waste your own autistic time but give OP a chanceI can see if you're making a part for a huge project with hundreds of interlocking parts (that you wouldn't be using freecad for) with a team that it would matter, but I doubt that's what OP is doing
Does the subdivision *meaningfully* distort geometry?I doubt it.
>>2957375you should try freecad. It contains a built in profile that mimics the layout & keyboard shortcuts of blender.
>>2957461Hey, can you perhaps give me some advice on multi-part projects?As i insert an earlier part into my new parts space just for reference, they are like horny rabbits trying to take references from eachother, and thus becoming child/parents of eachother. Do you have any good techniques to keep the parts ineependent?Kthx
>>2957818Solidworks btw
>>2957375if your shrink diagnosed you with severe autism, and you like being tied up and having your nipples pinched really hard, i can only recommand openSCADwe have a word in french for thing that makes you feel like openscad : une purgebut i like it
>>2957795i decided to try openscad, it seems like it's a bit easier. FreeCAD keeps constraining you and throwing errors that require some brain power to understand.
try BRL-CAD
>>2957497>just kindaSurely you can be a bit more specific?
>>2957819NTA but you've got options. You can click the "no external references" button on the ribbon. You'll lose some constraint functionality but it'll make sure no external references are created.You can lock or break external references from sketches and feature from the context menu on the feature tree. It should have a tab that says "External references". Also in sketch you have the "Display/delete relations" tab where you can go check out the relations and delete the external ones and replace them with fixed or dimensioned relations.Or you can make a 'Skeleton' part in the assembly where you'll model just the geometry that needs to be shared between parts. Then you can reference any other part only to the skeleton and you'll have a single parent to all the children features and thus no fucky children/parent loops
