I’ve been using a number of programs to design 3D parts. While there are a number of very good commercial offerings these are very costly and my budget does not stretch that far. Autodesk is a particular favourite as they seem to provide quite a number of tools in this space including photogrammetry, mesh modelling and parametric CAD. Their TinkerCAD is pretty good. I’d love to use their stable of tools but as a maker and hobbyist they remain largely out of reach.

Instead I’ve been trying the free and opensource tools and they very in ability and usefulness. While Blender is perfect in the mesh modelling space and my son is pretty good with it, like a lot of comprehensive tools you need to devote the time to make it become familiar. For a while I’ve use FreeCAD and some of it is pretty amazing, but as there is many ‘ways’ to accomplish the same thing it can get confusing at times. I’ve made a few models using it.

Recently I’ve started using OpenSCAD and are really enjoying it. OpenSCAD is a little unusual as it is a programming language of sorts and you do not operate in a WYSIWYG mode – instead creating the model in your mind and then translating this into distances and objects. A great tutorial on OpenSCAD is over here. Its power comes from using geometry in a Cartesian reference space to combine, intersect, and subtract objects to create your model. I find it very powerful and easy to use as I can easily visualise 3D objects.

I’m building an enclosure for my 3D printer and will keep a record here, while making the objects available on Thingiverse for others to use.