Free 3D CAD

[phileakins]

Autodesk Fusion360 allows free use for students and hobbyists. I've been climbing it's learning curve for two weeks and I am hooked.

I've been trying Fusion360 for the last couple of weeks, having fallen out with the 3d aspects of TurboCad Deluxe, I thoroughly agree with John. The learning curve is quite shallow, at least to start with, but there are plenty of official support/tutorial videos on YouTube for the more difficult stuff.

I'm equally hooked.

 

[david bigcheeseplant]

Another vote for fusion here, So far I have managed to draw up the 3D station building at Aylesbury render it and produce 2D drawings for laser cutting a STL files for 3D printing.

 

[BrushType4]

I'm a fan of QCAD but thought I'd give this a try. Early days but so far so good.

 

[JimG]

Another one that is free and might be worth consideration is Designspark Mechanical.

DesignSpark Mechanical 8.1 Download (Free) - SpaceClaim.exe

This is a cut down version of SpaceClaim - a high end, megabuck application which is being offered in association with RS Components in the UK. You can actually download 3D electronic components from libraries provided by RS. But it is a pretty good 3D CAD in its own right and works in a different way to Fusion 360. I actually find it a bit easier to understand and there are some pretty good tutorials around on the web. I found that the best bet is to chase up SpaceClaim tutorials which are very good and you just keep going with them until you hit a facility which isn't included in the more basic DesignSpark Mechanical.

Jim.

 

[delticfan]

I downloaded the fusion 360 free version for 30 days, guessing I'll need to register for hobby use before it runs out. Can anyone suggest some relevant tutorials for model building design / brickwork etc.

 

[JimG]

I downloaded the fusion 360 free version for 30 days, guessing I'll need to register for hobby use before it runs out. Can anyone suggest some relevant tutorials for model building design / brickwork etc.

The best place is Youtube if you search for "Fusion 360". There must be what seems like hundreds of Fusion tutorials on there now.

For doing brickwork for, possibly, laser cutting then you might find a 2D package like (free) DraftSight a bit better. Although 3D packages will allow 2D drafting, the facilities they provide are really geared towards generating extrusions for 3D and you might find the copy, paste, grouping, etc., facilities on a good 2D package are a lot more useful.

Jim.

 

[delticfan]

Thanks for the advice, I'm completely new to CAD and just trying to find something that a complete novice can work with is proving difficult. I have Autocad on my laptop from work but in my hands it might as well be written in Klingon. I can draw well but converting to CADis taking some doing for me. Thanks for the help I will try the tutorials and practice.

 

[JimG]

Another 3D package you might have a look at is DesignCAD Mechanical, which is being promoted by RS in their set of free electronic design tools. It's a cut down version of SpaceClaim, a top end CAD. and is a different style of modern 3D CAD which you might prefer to Fusion 360.

DesignSpark Mechanical Download and Installation.

The sodtware provides an interface to the RS product line so that you can use 3D images of the products when designing electrical/electronic equipment, maybe not a requirement for model railways, but who knows.

Jim.

 

[adrian]

I know it's rather late on this thread, but Autodesk Fusion360 allows free use for students and hobbyists.

Thanks for the heads up for this - for various reasons I decided to take the plunge and try it out.

Can anyone suggest some relevant tutorials for model building design / brickwork etc.

As Jim mentions there are plenty of tutorials on youtube - I started with this one

I would suggest you start with something simple to learn the basics of the software rather than diving straight into buildings and brickwork.

This is my first attempt, no where near the complexity of David's Aylesbury but it was a good starter for 10.


The 2mm Magazine is an A5 sized magazine, I have something similar for A4 magazines so I thought this would be a useful practice piece. One thing I do like is the user defined parameters - this means that I can change the thickness of the material (t) from 3mm ply to 2mm MDF with very little effort. The system then automatically resizes the finger joints with the change in thickness. I can also change the height, width and depth of the box just by changing the values in the user defined parameters.



The sketches were exported to dxf and needed a little tweaking before being sent to the laser cutter, a couple of small errors but nothing critical - it all fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. One magazine holder later!



So far I have been impressed but I am still struggling with a couple of aspects with respect to the drawing plane and selection of items within sketch.

I think I might have a look at Onshape and see if I find that easier. For any Onshape users can I set user parameters and set the material thickness in the same way as Fusion360?

 

[adrian]

I think I might have a look at Onshape and see if I find that easier. For any Onshape users can I set user parameters and set the material thickness in the same way as Fusion360?

I know it's bad form replying to ones own post but I have just spent the morning trying OnShape and I must say I'm impressed, it seems easier to me than Fusion360, even accounting for the experience gained from trying Fusion360.

It's the little things in OnShape like when you select a number of objects next to the cursor there is a count of the number of items selected etc.

Anyway to my query about setting parameters in Onshape - yes you can and they just call them variables.



The only thing that caught me out was that I created the variable after building the part and it complained about an invalid entry. At that point the variable was at the bottom of the list. So I dragged it up the list before the sketch stage and then it started working.

So start another test project this afternoon!

 

[delticfan]

Is it a free program, I'll give it a go maybe.

 

[adrian]

Is it a free program, I'll give it a go maybe.

It can be with certain stipulations - for hobby use it is free with the proviso that your documents have to be public.

I've certainly found it easier and more intuitive than fusion360. This afternoons session has been designing a stand for some collets I have. Considering I only signed up for it this morning it's gone fairly well. Just need to see how that translates to the laser cutter later.

 

[adrian]

I definitely prefer OnShape over Fusion360. It might be from my engineering background but I just found it easier to navigate and use. The operations appeared more logical and the timeline on how a part is built up is a lot simpler so I could easily move things around and roll back to the right position.

It was really simple to generate a drawing for export to dxf, I could lay things out for the laser cutter


Only slight cockup is at the first attempt I looked at the laser cutter and it seemed rather small. There's a couple of stages getting the drawing from OnShape to the laser cutter so it was trying to track down what was going wrong. Eventually spotted that the OnShape drawing was created at 1/2 scale so a quick change to 1:1 scale and second attempt worked fine.