3D printing

[TRFfan]

Does anyone know of a good 3D printing program that I could use to design parts? I want to order some parts from shapeways but I dont know any good programs out there.

 

[ttabbal]

123d is liked by many. Onshape works well for me as well.

 

[dcullen]

Does anyone know of a good 3D printing program that I could use to design parts? I want to order some parts from shapeways but I dont know any good programs out there.

123d, Onshape, OpenScad, Tinkercad

 

[GrouchoDuke]

Tinkercad is great for starting out. The team is working on it a ton right now too, so it gets new features all the time. It's really easy to use too.

Fusion360 is another one you can use from Autodesk. If you're a hobbyist or student (i.e. non-commercial), you can get a free license. It's much more capable, but takes a little more to learn. Both are really nice.

 

[neil_w]

Tinkercad is an incredibly easy way to get started. Just go make a free account and look at the tutorials. You'll be designing your own stuff before you know it.

Later you can move onto the more powerful tools as desired.

 

[TRFfan]

Thanks. Im not really looking to design something too complicated, just some fin jigs and nose cones.

 

[BLKKROW]

Does anyone know of a good 3D printing program that I could use to design parts? I want to order some parts from shapeways but I dont know any good programs out there.

You may want to contact some people on the forum to print it for you. It will be a lot cheaper than Shapeways.

 

[GrouchoDuke]

Thanks. Im not really looking to design something too complicated, just some fin jigs and nose cones.

Make sure you look on Thingiverse. I modify & use these for my fin alignment all the time: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:695599

For nosecones, you can search "Von Karman" on Thingiverse.

 

[vcp]

The new format of Thingiverse seems nice, but it's really screwed up in one major respect. I have a lot of collections. When you find a Thing that you want on the main window and select 'save to collection' the drop-down selection box will only show 30 collections max - I have at least double that. If you select the Thing and try to 'collect thing' from its page, same thing: only 30 collections. I've only found one way to get to all of my collections, and that is to select the designer of the Thing, go to his/her page of designs, and the Things displayed there will have the old 'select a collection' drop-down that will show more (I assume all) of your collections. This is a big nuisance and an abject failure in web page design. I only hope that they don't 'upgrade' the designer page to a similar fail.

 

[cwbullet]

For new users- Tinkercad

 

[jazzviper1]

Tinkercad is great for starting out. The team is working on it a ton right now too, so it gets new features all the time. It's really easy to use too.

Fusion360 is another one you can use from Autodesk. If you're a hobbyist or student (i.e. non-commercial), you can get a free license. It's much more capable, but takes a little more to learn. Both are really nice.

I second the Fusion 360.
You can also get cheap on line courses on how to use this one and it also does your slicing.