20

I visited a friend who is a professional medical engineer, and watched him work on a 3D design on some software paid for my the university they worked at. The options and features looked very practical!

Although I am not even close to working on so complicated projects, I did love the funtionalities. So now i have decided to put in the effort and learn a decent program, instead of using Tinkercad. I have been very happy with Tinkercad, but some things are only doable with workarounds or very creative methods.

The question is, what software should i start learning?

-FreeCAD
-Fusion 360
-AutoCAD
-Sketchup
-Blender
-LibreCAD
-Something else entirely?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] philpo@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago

There are two more alternatives, sadly for Windows only.

  • Solidedge Free for non-commercial makers, relatively easy to learn. But fucking expensive when you want to go commercial.

  • Solidworks Relatively cheap for makers and students,really expensive for commercial. The maker version has a reduced feature set,but that's not that relevant for most purposes (more towards simulation and things like that) Personally I would prefer it over Solidedge, but that's more of a personal view.

BUT: Both are Windows only(more or less), and of course commercial.

Sadly FreeCAD is not even close to most professional products - while it can be used for a lot of things,these things will take longer, be often more unstable and less "straightforward".Nevertheless for most non-professional uses,it will suffice.

this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
20 points (95.5% liked)

3DPrinting

18352 readers
128 users here now

3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io

There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml

Rules

If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![](URL)

Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS