I visited a friend who is a professional medical engineer, and watched him work on a 3D design on some software paid for my the university they worked at. The options and features looked very practical!

Although I am not even close to working on so complicated projects, I did love the funtionalities. So now i have decided to put in the effort and learn a decent program, instead of using Tinkercad. I have been very happy with Tinkercad, but some things are only doable with workarounds or very creative methods.

The question is, what software should i start learning?

-FreeCAD
-Fusion 360
-AutoCAD
-Sketchup
-Blender
-LibreCAD
-Something else entirely?

  • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    I was recently using entirely legitimate professional software because I was sick of Fusion360’s cloud crap. Admittedly I wasn’t using it at a professional level, but previously I would’ve had the same trouble with FreeCAD, which was what drove me to my entirely legitimate alternatives.

    But just recently I was trying FreeCAD, and struggling a bit with the interface, when I checked the latest version which was 1.0.0.

    So I updated and it’s had a complete UI overhaul. It now looks and runs like pro software. It has a modern look, and the UI interactions are extremely smooth.

    My favourite part of it is the spreadsheet system. It’s fully-fledged spreadsheet software, and when you’ve made all the calculations, you just have to name the cells you need, and then you can access them as variables from the design. It’s really powerful for parametric design. That part of it was already much better than autodesk’s parameter system.

    Anyway, I’m not going back to Fusion or any of the pro software again. I’m doing my latest project in FreeCAD and it’s a super smooth experience.