Not a video. Getting to grips with openSCAD.

OpenSCAD is awesome and really worth the time investment. You can very quickly do quite complex things.

Wait a sec, I'm a Autodesk student.. and I in my late forties lol. so yeah its free, but not free. 😕

Dane

You should try Autodesk Fusion 360 (Free to use) It's good.

Dane

You should get a elegoo mars dlp printer, i can print some and send if you want to try them ,let me know. Merry Christmas everyone. For cad im a rhino or 3ds cad guy

Jamie

Just installed on a Chromebook - looks like a steeper learning curve for me but will give it a go, thanks for the heads up

Robert

by the look of the part you may have a printer setup tweak to find and adjust Clive. the ladder pattern you can see looks like the layer change filament retraction tweak might be needed. I could be totally wrong but it looks as if the printer is retracting the filament too early (or too fast) at the end of the layer or when it has just changed layer its not extruding quick enough causing a little gap in the outside wall that will not give you a water tight skin.. If I am wrong then I know i need new glasses and I publicly apologize to you Sir.

I start off in Tinkercad to get an idea of how the part will look in a 3D design then import the stl into 123D and use it as a reference and build another model with tweaks needed and off to the fdm printer or if more detail is needed (threads cut or other things) into F360. If I jump into F360 I can sit there forever and get nowhere.

Clive has a 3D Printer in house to make all the things you can not buy from the chinglish sellers on Fleabay

I love OpenSCAD; definitely my favourite tool for modelling parts. I am a programmer though – so I suspect that's how my mind works.

Auctoris

Does Clive have a printer at home or did he send that out?

Thanks for this 👍

The Tinkering Shed

I may be wrong, but I don't believe it does. If you skip past the top 4, this link has a bunch of free cnc gcode generators. http://replicat.org/generators

Phr3d13

Does OpenSCAD create Gcode? I ask because I have a little 3 axis router/engraver I bought a couple of years ago, it came with Artcam and an obviously dodgy keygen, I have used it but very little as it's both difficult to use Artcam and ethically questionable.

The Tinkering Shed

Clive, the so-called "Customizables" on Thingiverse are a nice source of useful OpenSCAD examples. OpenSCAD is particularly useful for parametrized designs, that is, the piece looks more or less the same, but you can change one or several dimensions and the piece still works (think of hose adapters for a simple example). Just to throw this out there in case you didn't know about the connection between Customizables and OpenSCAD already.

Andreas Schuderer

Agreed Clive, OpenSCAD is great stuff. Maybe I just think in CSG, but I find it so much easier to quickly knock up an accurate object in OpenSCAD. To save fingers, it's good to create some simple macros like "module rx(a) { rotate([a, 0, 0]) children() }" and put them in an include file.

Sounds very much like PDMS CAD I used to do some 35 years ago on an old mainframe, might have a play.

Graham Eida

I was wondering if you'd done any more 3D printing recently, Clive. I've had mine for exactly a year today and wouldn't be without it now.

I also enjoy openSCAD. Check out TinkerCAD too. With practice one can be quite precise with that too.

Makes me feel like I'm left back in the dust here. Been using the old 123Design that they killed off ages ago and mashed into one of the other Autodesk programs. Quite fond of it for its ease tbh, and its always helped me to create functional parts. I'll have to join the real world at some point and move on I suppose. Its been unsupported/updated for a few years now. Doesn't bode well for this ever changing environment I'd figure.

I'll agree. Tinkercad is the king of simple 3D object making. There's supposed to be a schematic generator of sorts in there somewhere too. Skip to FreeCAD for the hard work. I don't use Fusion because I couldn't get my video card to pass through to my WIndows VM. Tinkercad is still Autodesk family. Onshape is another online CAD but you have to make your design open to everyone to use the free version completely. FreeCAD is glitchy in weird ways more often than I like but it does a lot of good work. I think OpenSCAD is also inside FreeCAD. I don't use the SCAD much except for seeing that it worked. Very nice for progamatic style of CADing. Check the latest AMPhour podcast for an interview with the guy that manages TInkerCAD and related softwares under Autodesk. Intersting.

It's a small open-frame Tiertime printer and I used about 8g of standard PLA filament.

Big Clive

I use OpenSCAD for pretty much everything I print, since the vast majority of my printing consists of geometric, non-organic shapes. I've never been any good with traditional CAD tools, but I sit down at a blank screen, pound out a bunch of code, and end up with a physical object; I don't think that's ever going to get old.

+1 for openSCAD for simple things. F360 for the rest. You can learn a lot from other successful things in thingaverse. Some people post their source files along with the rendered STL files. by opening the source files from those posts you can learn quite a few nifty tricks.

NotMyRealName

FreeCAD exists. I have barely used it but it seems like it can do stuff. Fusion360 isn't a good option for new hobbyist to get in to given that the free license will only get more restrictive and the commercial use startup license now requires proof of income lower than the allowed limit. OpenSCAD is generally the better option for anything not hyper complicated. It'll work on any OS, is actually free, and widely supported.

Kadah

Fusion360 isn't a reliable long term option anymore, Autodesk already started to cut back features and adding additional limits on the free hobbyist license. In another year or two they will likely limit it so much that it becomes unusable. I have been using Fusion for about 3 years and used to recommend it highly. The cheapest license is like $1000/year. Its the same deal with Egale, would pay for a few extra features but the first step in to any of the licenses is massive one.

Kadah

I'm fond of OpenSCAD as well, and have been using it for a while.

John Rehwinkel

Oh no, here we go again. Now I've gotta go buy a 3D printer

Mike Wynne

BC, please forgive me for not paying attention when you talked about having a 3D printer, and explain how you made the device and the consumables you chose, and quantity consumed.

I really like openscad, very quick to learn the basics. I also love the fact its written as code, so you can define variables to use to make something parametric very easily. I've a couple of designs on thingiverse that allow the input of a few variables to make a custom stl.

I came here to say the same as above, Tinkercad is amazing for simple stuff.

evilution

You make it sound so simple. I've been meaning to learn Fusion360 for years, but I keep just going back to TinkerCAD to quickly model things to 3D print. I do know openSCAD is super popular, though. Maybe I should finally give it a go.

Brooks Andersen