I’ve finally reached a brick wall where I can’t just find something on Printables/Thingiverse that I can modify for my use case. Until now, I’ve been able to find something close and use OrcaSlicer to make small adjustments or occasionally kit bash two models together.

Now, it seems, I need to design something from scratch.

I’ve had Blender recommended, but I just cannot make sense of it no matter how many Youtube videos make it look so easy.

I’ve also got FreeCAD installed but am still getting my bearings and nothing has come of it yet.

So, recommendations? The only limitations are that it has to run on Linux and not be a cloud service. I’m willing to pay for a license if need be but no SaaS or having to fight with Wine to get it going.

  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zipEnglish
    32·
    2 days ago

    Do yourself a favor:

    Use Onshape until you are comfortable and confident with your CAD work. Onshape’s design is much more industry standard (I think it is derived from Solidworks?) and pretty much all of the workflows and terminology are similar. Contrast that with FreeCad where a lot of tools have very specific names and some are split out into two.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaTNTUzA5dM is a great video on the subject. Just… watch at like 1.25x-1.5x speed because Deltahedra has a very specific speaking cadence and… yeah. But a great example is the mindset of extrude (positive or negative) versus having to decide if you are padding or pocketing. It isn’t a huge difference once you know what you are doing but it can really trip people up when they are learning the ropes. Especially since most people will just say “make a sketch and extrude it”.

    FreeCAD is an excellent second (or third) CAD tool. I strongly discourage anyone from making it their first. And yes, it sucks to use closed source cloud only nonsense. But OnShape is actually REALLY good (for now…) and it is more important to have that solid foundation so you can move on to FreeCAD.

    Like, if you learn OnShape you have also more or less learned SolidWorks and Fusion360 and… If you learn FreeCAD… you have learned FreeCAD.

    The other side is to make actual models in Blender. Blender… I actually like blender a lot. I don’t have enough of a background to know if the workflows are meaningfully different as my experience is limited to using one tool decades ago (might have been Maya?) for making models for UT before switching to Blender. Just understand that Blender is more for making “art” rather than functional parts.