Best FREE CAD Programs for 3D PRINTING

hey guys a video and welcome to this video 3d printers are great you can create a whole bunch of stuff and there are millions of models already available on platforms like Thingiverse and many others but just printing Marlys that other people made kind of gets old after a while so you do want to create your own 3d models but which stop or should you use so in this video I'm gonna compare some of the most popular options that are really well suited for the 3d printing and that are also all community free at least in their version that we can I use them now to low your followers of this channel might think they're having deja vu but it's not you I actually have made similar videos like this one before it but the last one is over two years ago and me just watching that video I get super trenched out and it really is not that great so I'm gonna try to make this video a lot better and I also put in some other programs that I haven't previously mentioned that might have come up newer or that all the programs have been updated since I made the video so I think it is bearable warranted to have another video I also want to give a big thanks to endurance lasers for sponsoring this video they offer a wide variety of lasers that you can attach to your 3d printer or cincy browser machine or whatever you already have and easily convert them into a CNC laser engraver and even color they have a whole range of different power outputs depending on what you need and since they're my lasers or all diode based they're super easy to set up in control so if you want to learn more about endurance lasers make sure to check out a link in a description so now since it's not much is just talking about the programs we're actually going to go over to the computer and I'm gonna show you with a screen capture what these programs are like and what their pros and cons are so here we are inside of our first contestant think your CAD I've previously already featured it and it fell is by far just the easiest CAD program to learn all you gotta do is find the shape you want here on the side let's say we want something that is somewhat rectangular then we can choose start off with the box drag it here into the scene and resize it to the size that we need it let's say we need a little bit bigger but not as tall only four millimeters fake and then what we need is a cylindrical hole in here then either we can already take the hole here or we can even start off with a cylinder put it here and oh we don't what a solid cylinder we will actually want it to be a hole so we use the hole here resize it to the size we want and here we then already have a hole inside of this plate now you also have even more shapes there's a whole bunch of stuff here that is available if you want to add maybe some character you want you want to add this ass robot into here I had a second one over oh we didn't want a second one let's just delete it it's just super easy to get around and once you save it and export it it's already ready to print since it's all spiced saved in STL files so if you just want to get something very simple done or you may be one two kids to get into into a 3d modelling then you really can't go wrong with think you can but if you want just a bit more granular control than in Tinkercad and a bit more features maybe then let's move on to the second program that I'm gonna show you here we are inside of Sketchup and it actually used to be a desktop program but now Sketchup is also available inside of your browser which just makes it even more easy and you don't have to install anything now there is a pro version of Sketchup that does cost some money but for just simple projects the free version is more than enough here on the Left we have our tool panel where you can choose what we want to do let's start off with a rectangular sketch here let's do it on the bottom here this gives us our sketch and then we can also we could add even more detail to it but let's just take this sketch and extrude it give it some height let's say right about here and then we maybe want to add some holes into it just like before we can just create another sketch here what all the holes that we want and then we can use this tool again and maybe this is actually not what I wanted to do but we can then just simply like that create a hole into our part here and if you want more than that you can of course there are more features available you can also use this other side bar here where you can do things like change the color of it let's say here we take a great paint pocket and then we can penetrate there's also a whole like components warehouse well let's say we want to add some bolts to this we've just search for a bolt here and then it gives us a whole list of different things that are actually two thousand four hundred pages or twist four bolts so you might want to specify it a bit more but let's say we want this one we just download it real quick and add it in here and we already have the bolts inside of the model now now it's of course way to bake but we can easily take to fix that by scaling it so as you can see it is super easy to get started here in Sketchup and you can also get into a lot more complicated things as you do have a bit more features than inside of thing clad where it is limited to the basic shapes here you can create basically anything that there's arcs and whatnots and all that different features that you could want you can however notice that this a lot of the features inside of Sketchup are more targeted towards architectural design since that is what Sketchup was originally designed to do so let's take a look at a different program that is really designed to create parts and more mechanical designs here we have on shape now on shape is really quite popular and they have gone through a couple of different acquisitions but it still is the same program now if there is a slight caveat well and so hobbies you get all the features of on shape completely for free you are required to automatically share all your designs as open-source now for some of you that might not be a big deal if you just want to design a new knob for the kitchen cabinet you really probably don't care if the design is open-source or not but if you use the CAD programs to maybe create some designs for your business or something then maybe all the designs automatically being shared on through an open-source license it's not the best thing and once you want to buy on shape it is actually kind of expensive so I'm just gonna quickly go over it where it's quite a bit different than the previous ones as it is fully parametric and if you have never heard of parametric design then let me just quickly show you that here on the side you basically have your timeline all the different things that we're done are available here first we started out with this simple sketch that we created and then we extruded it and then we went on to a different sketch which we also extruder to create this other shape here and then with some more sketches we created these holes and these Philips and all these are separate steps but what the really cool thing is now that we just don't just see all the things here but we can actually go in to let's say this Philip and oh maybe it was kind of big too big so let's decrease it to five millimeters and click the green button and it all dynamically updates so no matter how much more things you've added to it even as far back as your very first sketch going in here and maybe let's say this dimension actually should have been 62 so you change it to 62 and it all dynamically updates and this is really just extremely powerful and can save you hours upon hours of time just redoing steps because he needed to change some dimensions or there is just something else that you forgot or have to change there also are just a plethora of different things that you can do you can of course add chamfers do extrudes yeah I can add rape to support you can also work with sheet metal and make joints and all that good stuff so it really is very professional program that can you could easily design a machine inside of this program and go onto manufacturing but still it is just kind of limited in its free version so I'm gonna show you a different program that I actually use all the time it's my main program and that is fusion 360 it has a lot of similarities to on shape as it is also fully parametric but it is not browser-based it's actually downloaded and it also is free but it actually is free for hobbies and also even sterols I'll see a long as you make I think a hundred thousand a year you can get a free hobbyist license for this program now they do change it all the time how exactly you have to go about it but I believe last I checked you have to download the free trial and then somewhere up here click something and find the small button that gives you access to the hobbyist license but don't worry guys it's not gone even though it might not be featured as prominently anymore on their website so here's just a simple part that I actually used very recently it's a little part that I've really printed that I used to transfer some balls spool nuts and here we have the timeline here in the bottom so I started off with just a simple cylinder and then added some threads to it and then later I run it over some of the parts here and then added two holes into it and here I can once again could easily here go to all the bodies here and if I had sketches I could also easily edit those and I just wanted to quickly show you what happens if you have a bit of a more complicated project here is my cnc conversion project and as you can see this is quite a complex program I have a whole bunch of different bodies here I also have like animated hinges here I can move all the stuff around here and it's just really really powerful and it's actually kind of easy to get started you do have to watch a couple tutorials but once you get the hang of it it's not that bad and even here I could go back into and every single step and just change the little settings and modify the design however I choose think just a quick look over here we of course have all the functions that we want to extrude revolve sweeps lofts Trading ribs you can also then of course modify them in every way that you want it and here we also have different workspaces the design workspace is where I do your 3d modeling but you can also render used things you can create animations that like those beautiful exploding shots of your machine or whatever is all possible if within here you can even do simulations well you like find out where the stress points are and like how much strength you need to add stuff like that and then in the end you can just simply export it to your 3d printer and you can even send it directly to Fuehrer and other 3d printing software or if you want to manufacture a design some other way you can easily create drawings and even these drawings update them an anomaly if I change some dimensions inside of the design of this that effect is drawing then this drawing will also be updated that's just the power of parametric design for you but while fusion 360 is a dedicated program on your computer all the data is still saved in the cloud and I know that some of you might have an issue with that also you aren't guaranteed to always have free access to it the free hobbyist license is always renew for a one year only so you never know if maybe next year you can't get the free license anymore and you can't really access your designs anymore if you are worried about that then the answer to your worries is free cat it's basically the open-source cat that can do everything there are a million different workspaces in here from just simple modeling to 2d sketches you can do spreadsheets with complicated design changes in it you can even create two paths for since emailing or within this program now it is quite a handful to learn and it does have some particular ways that it needs to be used which may be a bit higher of a learning curve than the previously mentioned programs but once you get a hang of it it's a really great program and yet again here we have the design history here basically where we can just go into the sketch for this pocket here we can extend this let's say let's say we want to make this puck longer here update close and as you can see the pocket is now longer and the design is dynamically updated in regards to time I won't go into too much more detail on that particular ways that you can use it in the features that it basically is very similar to fusion 360 and actually does have some workspaces that are different programs when you go with order days these were the main programs are one and two feature but I also have some kind of more honorable mentions for example if we go back to browser-based programs we have self cat here now the free definition is kind of sketchy here since well you can create all the models for free if you actually want to download the model and an STL or something you do have to pay your monthly subscription which is like 15 bucks a month it's not that expensive actually for really modeling programs but the other reason why I wanted to feature this program is while it is a very powerful program and has a lot of features it is not parametric and that's not a bad thing it's just a very different way of working here instead of trading sketches and basing all your designs on that we are you can easily deform these you can twist all of these designs and you can also directly edit the individual points I could easily just move this individual point here I can select this individual point and then move it around and modify my design in this way there also is a sculpting workspace where I can actually use the sculpting brushes to modify my design after maybe choose one that makes absolute make sense here and as you can see I'm like smoothing over this corner and this way you can actually really create some organic looking models which is really hard with the previously mentioned programs they all basically allow you to create geometric designs very easily but as soon as you want something that is organic that has curves and maybe three-dimensional smooth surfaces and it really just gets hard you couldn't design a mannequin that it has some really organic looking features inside of fusion 360 well there is always a way but it would be a lot harder than inside a program like self cat here and the last honorable mention that i want to give is openers cat it is once again extremely different on all the programs mentioned as in that you don't move anything in the graphical user interface it's all code based you basically if you want a cube it just write a cube and then the parameters the size the very bonnet percentage change and that way you can also create designs that are very very parametric it is just a very different way of working and probably not the fastest unless you have some very specific use cases where this is the ideal program so I hope you found a program in the list that I just showed you that fits what you want to do and if you have other programs that you love and I haven't mentioned since I can not mention all of them there's way too many out there make sure the lessons are in the comments so that other people really becomes have the possibility to find even more options if they didn't find something in this list so make sure to LIKE comment and subscribe and also share this video to all the people that you think might be interested in this topic you can't always reliable YouTube algorithm to serve the video to the people that are actually interested in the topic so by you sharing the video you help me out a great deal and hopefully also the other people that can see the video so thanks for watching and until next time

Channel: Datulab Tech

Views: 241,620

Keywords: top free cad, top 5 free cad, top 7 free cad, best free cad, free cad program, free cad software, best cad software, cad, 3d printing, best cad for 3d printing, best beginner cad, top cad for 3d printing, fusion 360, freecad, tinkercad, onshape, selfcad, openscad, sketchup

Id: aco9HNkt7ZA

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019