What is the cost? Money, Time, privacy.This is not an all-inclusive list but are some of the major players out there: (Note: I make no money from this. I provide this information to help others who are getting started with 3D printing.)
Some free CAD programs I have come across are: 1. FreeCAD 2. Blender 3. Fusion360 (By Autodesk) 4. TinkerCAD 5. Onshape Paid CAD programs: 1. AutoCAD (By Autodesk) 2. Solidworks 3. Fusion360 4. TurboCAD 5. Onshape I decided to use a paid version of Solidworks. They have a newer licensing model called a ‘maker license’. It’s $100/yr (which is less than a Netflix subscription without ads) and you get access to the full professional and up to date version of solidworks. You also get a ton of cloud-based features and applications that I am still investigating. Limitations: Per their FAQ
See their website for additional details (https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-makers) I like solidworks, the controls make sense to me, and I have spent a lot of time working with it in college on real projects that we machined with a cnc mill and lathe. See my post about making a level here: https://www.nitrospaz.com/torpedo-level.html I looked at and tried some of the others but they all had licensing quirks that I did not like such as having a free version that didn’t have a lot of the paid features or only being free for 3 years then having to move to a subscription or all your models had to be public and/or stored in the cloud or the paid version was prohibitively expensive $$$ or it was going to be a great expense of time to setup and learn how to use. For me the biggest considerations in licensing for these products were:
I suggest checking the FAQ section of the product you are thinking of using to see what restrictions they have as these can change from time to time. Licensing, cost, and usability are just a few starting points to consider but can have an impact later on if or when you decide to monetize your models. Next week I will be going into what slicer program I use. Thanks for reading I hope you found this useful!
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December 2022
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