3DPrinting
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: !functionalprint@kbin.social or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
-
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
-
Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
-
No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
-
No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
-
Do not create links to reddit
-
If you see an issue please flag it
-
No guns
-
No injury gore posts
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 
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
view the rest of the comments
Unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of good options. They're either commercial and therefore potentially cost $$$ (or are time limited or otherwise restricted), or they're free and kind of suck in one way or another.
Of the commercial offerings I like OnShape. I think Fusion 360 is fine too. They're WAY more powerful than anyone needs for just designing 3D parts but they're still powerful, well designed tools. I think if your needs are simple and you don't care a great deal about complex shapes then Tinkercad is great too.
Of the opensource, FreeCAD is the closest to OnShape / Fusion 360. It's a parametric modeller like they are but the user interface that throws every button in your face at once and doesn't bother to sort them very well or provide context. It's not an intuitive or forgiving tool and really needs a usability makeover to make it as simple as the commercial equivalents. I've never had much success with it because of this.
Blender is pretty popular for modelling. It's not really CAD so it's likely more useful for modelling free form / artistic stuff. The UI is pretty complex but it is extremely powerful.
OpenSCAD is pretty neat if you want to create something by essentially programming a shape and rendering it. It works well for certain kinds of geometric designs that are better expressed in code. e.g. maybe you have to punch 100 holes in a spiral pattern on the side of a box or something.
On the FOSS side I also like SolveSpace but I think its limitations and attitude from the team are holding it back. For simple project I'd even prefer it to FreeCAD to be honest, it tends to trip up way less!