Getting Started with CAD Modeling for 3d Printing

hello this is irv shapiro with the make with tech channel formerly the dr vax channel over the last few years i've created a number of videos about computer aided design you know 3d printing things you download off the internet or building things out of wood from plans you get from someone else that's good fun but creating things from scratch that go from your thoughts from your mind to a design to then a 3d print that's really exciting to do that you need to use a computer aided design program a modeling program to create your designs your models and today we're going to talk about my favorite modeling programs and why i use them we're going to cover the following topics first what is computer-aided design then we're going to talk about what i need from a computer-aided design program to solve the problems i'm trying to solve we're going to talk about licensing models how different computer-aided design programs are sold or protected then we're going to talk about different modeling approaches along with some demonstrations finally we'll go through some of the top cad programs computer-aided design programs that i've used and i'll share with you which ones i still use today and why so stay tuned and let's learn something together [Music] okay i'm going to switch the order for my introduction just a little bit by starting with my needs i need a computer-aided design program that will allow me to create physical things whether it's a toy a big pawn for a chess set it's potentially a cookie cutter it's a bracket i can slide onto my desk to hold cables it's a toy for my grandchildren these connectors were designed in a cad program and 3d printed shelf brackets parts for broken appliances i want to be able to take my knowledge of 3d printing and use it to create interesting things now one of the challenges i have is i'm sort of a rules following guy that means if there's a license agreement if there's a rule i'm going to follow it and even if i could get away with it if it says that i have to pay for this software if i use it professionally i'm gonna pay for it but what is professionally i run a youtube channel i teach people things i use computer-aided design programs both as a hobbyist but also as a part of my teaching curriculum and youtube pays me a little money not a lot of money but a little money and does that make me a professional does that mean i have to pay for the software or what if i'm using a piece of software as a hobbyist and then i say you know what i really could sell these things i created do i have to go back and pay for the software so licensing is a big deal for me next i want the tool to have the capabilities i need to make professional quality designs so as an example a minor addition to this model is these edges are beveled that type of bevel is called a chamfer how do you create that type of chamfer and is it easy to do some systems it is some systems it isn't next i like to learn things by watching videos and also by reading so i want good documentation and lots of youtube videos about whatever software i select finally i'm a mac guy so if it doesn't work on a mac i'm not going to use it but better yet many of my viewers are pc folks so i want to select tools that work on both mac and pc or windows equally well so those are my criteria now let's think about what is computer aided design well generically computer-aided design software is software that helps you create plans and models for things you're going to use somewhere else well they're really many many use cases but let's talk about two one is you want to create a three-dimensional model you're going to use in a video in a film in an image as part of a video game those types of modeling programs often are really good at modeling soft and flexible things like people but also modeling hard and concrete things like objects you'd see in a computer game they often feel like sculpturing tools like tools a sculpture would use with clay to model something but they do it on a computer screen then another type of computer-aided design program is for creating physical things either the plans for things you might create on a lathe or with woodworking tools or on a 3d printer and those are the types of cad programs computer-aided design programs i'm most interested in now when you go to a cad program website you'll notice immediately that some seem to highlight creating images pictures that's the first category sort of the sculpting category and some really show you examples of physical things a automobile engine or something like that so i'm going to concentrate on cad for creating objects each of these cad programs has a license associated with it and the license says how you're allowed to use it under what terms the traditional software licenses that i grew up with 30 and 40 years ago are now called perpetual licenses that means you pay money for something to the author to the company that created the software you get the right to use it you don't get the right to resell it you don't get the right to give it away you get the right to use it then potentially you pay more money every month or every year if you want updates that's a traditional license a newer style of license that's very popular now because really it's good for the manufacturers for the producers of software is a more or less a rental agreement these are called subscriptions where you pay the money every month or annually for the right to use the software as long as you keep paying for it when you stop paying them on a monthly basis you're not supposed to use the software and some software a lot of software enforces that then there's free software free software is software where the author says use it as long as you want it's free now why would they do that well maybe they make money by selling you a maintenance agreement where you get updates or you get additional features or you get support on the telephone email via chat or maybe they're just good chaps that like giving stuff away and then the last category is called open source in open source not only do they say you can use the software but they give you the programming language that was used to create the software so you can change it any way you want generally as long as you give your changes back to the community now why would somebody do that well generally it's a group of people that come together and say we need something for our industry or for our hobby or for humanity we want lots of people to contribute so we're going to do it as a community project and make it open source the disadvantage is there's really nobody typically in charge and so since a lot of people are contributing once the first release comes out it might be a while before you see a next release or there may be people that take a copy of it because anybody can and they fork it that means they make their own copy and you have competing projects so it can get messy but it also can be very powerful i tend to for the make with tech channel want to use either free software or open source software so all of my viewers independent of their economic position can use the software i recommend now if you're doing this professionally there's nothing wrong with perpetually licensing or subscribing to software and using it as part of your business expense but for many of my viewers they're hobbyists i often recommend either free or open source software now when producing physical objects there are a number of ways you can do that the first is i refer to as direct object manipulation in that case you take a sphere you drag it onto your screen maybe you take another sphere you drag it onto the screen maybe you take a third shape and you manipulate it you more or less glue them together to create your object we're going to look at a wonderful program called tinkercad as an example of that but the problem is much like building things with legos if you go to want to change something on the bottom of your model [Music] it's a problem everything's sort of going to collapse you might have to redo a lot of stuff so direct object manipulation might not be great for complex models with many parts that have to be very precise the next thought style of modeling is modeling where you draw a drawing and maybe you then extrude it or expanded into 3d but you manipulate those lines directly and much like the first example it doesn't track really a history of everything you've done so much like that first example if you want to change something later you might run into problems sketchup is an excellent program that was originally designed for architects you see a lot of woodworkers using it now and that's where you directly draw things and you extrude them and you manipulate them but it's not creating a history cad programs that create a history of everything you do step by step and let you basically replay the history make a change and replay the history are called parametric modeling programs so let's start with tinkercad just show you how you'd manipulate objects then we'll talk about how parametric modeling works in a little more detail so let's look at tinkercad first as a direct object manipulation program so if i want a box i drag a box onto the screen then i can make the box bigger by manipulating it directly or by changing these parameters on the side so if i want it 28.5 millimeters i can set it to 28.5 so i can do things relatively precisely now if i want to add another shape to my model i just draw it onto the screen and i can move it around in different places so if we make this one a little bit taller i can move it around here and you'll see it through our cube i could then select both of these objects and i could group them together and now i have an object a cube and a cylinder but i can do something else very powerful i can change one of these objects in this case the cylinder from being a solid to being a hole something i'm going to cut out of my box so change it to a hole and then i'll regroup them together and we've just cut out a notch in this box so very very easy to use i recommend if you've never used cad you start with tinkercad because you'll learn about the idea of creating a part by taking basic objects shapes and combining them together and either adding shapes together or cutting one shape out of another but much like tinkercad if i build up a complex model i want to change something at the bottom it might break so now let's look at parametric design and to do that i'm going to show you a program that's not graphical at all but it'll introduce you to these concepts so here we're looking at open s-cad openscad is a scripting language it's like a programming language where you define steps you're going to take to draw a shape so as an example right here in the beginning these double slashes mean that's a comment i'm going to take those out and i'm going to say draw this and you can see here that we just drew a cube if i change this to 40 so all sides are equal we now instead of having a box have a cube great now this is lined up right now on the origin of my drawing it's at point zero zero think of it as x y and z zero zero i can move that to someplace else by adding a command in front of it that's a constraint it's moving it's constraining where this box is going to be drawn so i'm going to move it 10 over along the x-axis so let me take and comment out this one and say translate which is the open s-cad way of saying move and we'll move it over so you'll see it moved over i made it a little smaller so let's make it the same size so you can see it in the same position and now it's moved over i want to move it a little more i can move it a little more and every time i have these two steps together in my defining the parameters of my object i can replay them over and over again now in these steps you'll see i have x y and z instead of putting x y and z in these i can save these in variables and so in this next example i'm going to set x y and z and this time i'm going to add another step called a difference different just says cut one object out of another the second object in my list will be cut from the first one so i'm going to draw a cube i'm going to draw a cylinder and i'm going to cut the cylinder out of the cube and where am i going to position the cube and the cylinder well i'm defining those with these parameters so now if i render this we'll see here i have my cube let's increase the resolution here a little bit you'll see i have my cube with a nice hole in the middle but unlike legos because they're all based on parameters i can change any of this i can move this over to position 15 and down to position 10 re-render this and you'll notice the circle stayed in the right place i can move this down so it's flat on the bottom of my drawing surface [Music] and the circle stayed in the right place the cylinder stayed in the right place that is the power of parametric design now i use openscad and i'll explain why a little bit later but for many people they want something that's more graphical so how do you get the advantage of parameters all done graphically well you use a traditional parametric cad program and i'm going to show you freecad so let me switch the freecad here and i'm going to create a body think of that as a basic as a three-dimensional shape and the way i'm going to create a body is by drawing a two-dimensional shape and extruding it or in the case of free cat it's called padding it so i'm going to create a sketch i'm going to put it on a plane we have the x y and z planes i'm going to put it on the x y plane and let's very quickly take and draw a box whoops and i'm going to define that this point and this point are centered on the origin that's called a constraint so i'm going to say they're symmetric on the origin then i'm going to find that this line and this line are both equal so now i've defined a square i can make it bigger and smaller but it's always centered on the origin and it's always a square because they're equal if i define one length just the length of this axis say 60 it turns green and now i can't move it at all because it's fully constrained with parameters and all of the parameters are displayed in my model so let me go and close the sketch and now i can turn into a three-dimensional object by padding it and i can make it different sizes as an example i can make it 40 high now it's fixed in space based on where the sketch is fixed i can go back to my model and i can go back to my original sketch and double click on it and if i change this to 30 and say ok and then close this freakhead is going to replay those steps so it has the sketch and then the pad and now it's changed now what if i want to put a circle in the middle well i can do another sketch right now let's turn on the origin you'll see this is built above the x y plane i'm going to build it down below so i can do a sketch on top so you can see it easier so i can go to my pad here and i can say that it is reversed true and now it's below so i can put a sketch on the top here which will make it easier for us to see so i'm going to say that i want to create a new sketch on the x y plane that same plane right here and i can see my model underneath so it makes it easy because i have a nice reference point unless just like we did before let's create a cylinder so i'm going to start on the origin and draw a cylinder there it might be a little bit hard to see so to make it easier to see i'm going to turn off by hitting the space bar that design underneath now i can take this particular circle and i can constrain it i'm going to constrain the diameter to 20 millimeters i'm going to close my task i'm going to turn my pad back on and we'll see we have the circle centered on the same point in the middle here and now instead of patting it i'm going to pocket it let me select the circle and i'm going to go to tasks i'm going to create a pocket and you can see that goes five millimeters down so let's make it go further down doesn't matter as long as it goes through and now we can see that i have a circle cut through my box but i can always change it and things will stay in the relatively same places so i go back to my original box and i can say that it is now 50 millimeters close it and you'll see everything updated properly i can go to this diagram and i can say that this is 40 millimeters close it and you can see it updated properly so that's the beauty of parametric design so we talked about tinkercad an example of direct object manipulation more or less like stack stacking building blocks that a child would use or legos very easy to do very very quick we talked about openscad which is an example of parametric design done with language and we just looked at freecad which is parametric design done with graphic manipulation now let's go through some more examples and tell you the pluses and minuses of each and where i use them we've already spoken about tinkercad as i mentioned i think it should be the first cad program everyone uses it just helps them understand the concepts the concept of cad is not drawing a very very complex drawing and then magically turning it into 3d all cad consists of creating basic building blocks combining them together where some are used in combinations some are used to cut one shape out of another and you do that step by step by step tinkercad is completely free it is used by literally millions of students in schools all over the world so i think it's very unlikely that model is going to change probably the best 3d cad system for creating solid objects that i've ever used is fusion 360. i find it easy to use and very broad in its capabilities but there's a caveat autodesk the people who make fusion 360. by the way they also make tinkercad in the case of fusion 360 they keep changing their licensing rules so today fusion 360 an annual license is 495 now a few years ago i actually paid for that license i actually paid for it a couple years in a row because i thought it was an excellent program for creating things for 3d printing but then i realized it was a lot of money for many of my users so they're unlikely to use it and even using some of the revenues from youtube i just thought it was too much so i looked into their free option they have a free option for hobbyists for non-professional use but they changed the free option over the years they've reduced its capabilities and they require you to reapply to get a free license annually so i've stopped teaching fusion 360 and using it for my own use if you're using it professionally excellent excellent tool it's a tool i'd recommend for many people that are doing modeling for 3d printing printers professionally sketchup a lot of people love sketchup but look at the picture here what's it showing as an example an architectural rendering and while it can be used for 3d printed objects that's not where its heart is so that's primarily why i don't use it there is a free option of sketchup that works quite well and it's not as expensive to upgrade to various paid options as fusion 360. but its heart seems to be in the world of architecture and not the world of solid 3d modeling what about onshape onshape's been recommended by many people in the comments on other videos it's an excellent program the commercial license for onshape is fifteen hundred dollars a year that's just too much expensive for me now i may qualify for the free option and the free option is very creative you can use onshape for free as long as you only publish your models in their cloud available to everyone so you're truly in the open source modeling space very creative very interesting idea but what happens if i create a model and it ends up really good and then i said want to sell the model or sell the goods i produced with the model do i have to pay for it seems complicated my rule following mentality was just was not a good fit for me next is probably a program most of you have never heard of it's called matter control by the folks at matterhackers now matter control is an all-in-one program that does modeling slicing and controlling of 3d printers i think it's a really interesting way for people to get started in 3d printing that only want to have to learn one thing instead of learning a cad program and a slicer they learn one thing fortunately the cad side of matter control is clearly actively being developed but it doesn't quite feel polished yet it's a little complex to learn now i'm going to be doing some matter control update videos sometime in the next few months as it becomes a little more polished so it's something i would track it's something i would look for it's a cross between direct object manipulation and parametric design because it does keep a complete history of what you've done history doesn't always work right when you change things so i want to learn the ins and outs better at something i would consider if you're looking for an all-in-one solution next three programs that i don't use the first two design spark and a libra i don't use because i'm a mac guy and they only run on pcs they both have a number of fans they both seem to be competent libra is a newer offering design spark is an older offering i really just don't use them because i'm a mac guy and then blender is more of a sculpting program if you look at the front page it's designed for more for artists yes you can use it for 3d printing i wanted something designed for solid object modeling that brings me to the first parametric modeling program i shared with you and that's open s-cad where do i use openscad well it's so easy to share a model with anyone because it's just a program it's a script you share that script with someone they have your model it also has a remarkable capability you'll see on the right of the screen here where you can set it up where an end user someone who doesn't know anything about the scripting language can just change some parameters to change your model so i have a model for a shelf bracket that i share with people i have it published on thingiverse and thingiverse has a feature called the customizer that lets you manipulate open s-cad models unfortunately the customizer doesn't work all the time but you can always download the model open it in the open s-cad program and change the parameters so if i want to share a relatively simple model where i want people to be able to change it on their own without learning a new graphics program i use openscad finally the program i use the most is freecad freecad is really a bit of a swiss army knife of open source computer-aided design specifically designed for the engineering of the site the making stuff side versus the visualization pretty picture side of computer-aided design it's completely open source you can download and look at the program you can modify it you can create your own forks and they're really a lot of people working together to make it possible up until the last couple years it was a little rough around the edges with version .19 which is the current release it's really quite good some of the things that make it so good are its ability to integrate components sets of tools from other people other than the core developers those sets of tools are called workbenches it's also very easy to record macros that combine a bunch of steps together both the workbenches and the macros can be written in a programming language called python which is a little easier than than c plus plus the language at the core in the guts of freecad so if we look here you'll see these are some of the standard workbenches that are built in and if we go here to tools add-on manager you'll see there are quite a number of very interesting workbenches that help with specific things a workbench for 3d printing tools a workbench for doing curved surfaces there are also a number of macros and in all cases the source code's available so if you want to change it you could so for most hobbyist non-professionals i find freecad is an excellent choice because it's broad enough to handle many of your needs but it also is completely free you'll know it's will stay free because it's open source now if i was a professional using it every day for my business i would probably use fusion 360. so in summary learn cad on tinkercad great way to learn you want to understand parametric design or you want to create simple models and you're comfortable with something that looks like programming openscad is wonderful for most people building things a little more complex as a hobbyist as a non-professional i highly recommend free cat well folks i hope you learned something today if you did please click on the bell subscribe to the channel go ahead and share this video with everyone you know who might want to learn about computer aided design for the first time because we do cover some of the topics some of the basic ideas in addition to introducing you to some of the programs thanks so much for watching and let's continue to learn things together

Channel: Make With Tech (MakeWithTech)

Views: 118,356

Keywords: 3d modeling, 3d modeling for 3d printing, 3d modeling for beginners, 3d printer, 3d printer in action, 3d printers, 3d printers 2018, 3d printing, additive manufacturing, additive manufacturing 3d printing, what is 3d printing technology, cad 3d, CAD, computer aided design software, computer aided design (cad), 3d modeling for 3d printing tutorial for beginners, freecad, tinkercad, openscad, sketchup, blender tutorial, solidworks, fusion 360, onshape, what is computer aided design

Id: IUoTKbGAlhk

Length: 36min 13sec (2173 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021