One word of warning about onshape. If you're not paying their subscription prices (i.e. using the free personal license) the retain all rights to anything you make on their platform.
Me personally I don't care, I'm not making anything I'm going to sell, but you should be aware if you are
It is a great platform but I can't make it work with my 3DConnexion SpaceMouse (various browsers on MacOS) so I have to use Autodesk Fusion.
Which is a shame because certain quality of life features like selections are working much better on OnShape and you also have git style branches as well in the free version!
They also have an iPad app!
Highly recommended
I use it to design functional parts for 3D printing at home, very solid 3d design software that works on any internet connected device. Can easily open/see/edit parameters quickly on a phone or tablet even, to address a design flaw.
Workflow in a nutshell:
- Start a sketch on a plane, use toolbar circle, draw, type dimensions, close sketch.
- Click the rectangle you made and use toolbar extrude.
- Click the resulting object (bottom left) and export as STL / 3MF file.
It is parametric design:
- Discover your oops. Go back to sketch or extrude, edit dimension, entire design updates by magic.
- Dimensions can be changed into a quickly editable #variablesYouName by typing # basically.
Documentation is short and to the point. Same for most videos that explain how to accomplish something specific. Love it.
For folks who are curious, the product in question here is physical objects and Onshape is a CAD program.
Their licensing kerfuffle was a bit more subdued than Autdesk's on-going slow motion crash (maybe AD has finally come to a rest) --- as noted elsethread, all documents on a free account are public.
The opensource alternatives are a wide-ranging lot:
- BRL CAD --- intensely old-school, it is one of the oldest opensource codebases
- FreeCAD --- exactly what it says on the tin, the recent fixes and UI updates have put it back on the radar for a lot of folks
- Solvespace --- small/light-weight and nimble (a single downloadable executable on Windows last I checked) it has a UI which I never found comfortable
- Dune 3D --- the new kid on the block, it has a remarkably polished UI (it's the only interactive CAD program whose tutorial I made it through more-or-less successfully) --- it's had a number of previous discussions here:
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 27.2 ms ] threadMe personally I don't care, I'm not making anything I'm going to sell, but you should be aware if you are
Workflow in a nutshell:
- Start a sketch on a plane, use toolbar circle, draw, type dimensions, close sketch.
- Click the rectangle you made and use toolbar extrude.
- Click the resulting object (bottom left) and export as STL / 3MF file.
It is parametric design:
- Discover your oops. Go back to sketch or extrude, edit dimension, entire design updates by magic.
- Dimensions can be changed into a quickly editable #variablesYouName by typing # basically.
Documentation is short and to the point. Same for most videos that explain how to accomplish something specific. Love it.
Their licensing kerfuffle was a bit more subdued than Autdesk's on-going slow motion crash (maybe AD has finally come to a rest) --- as noted elsethread, all documents on a free account are public.
The opensource alternatives are a wide-ranging lot:
- BRL CAD --- intensely old-school, it is one of the oldest opensource codebases
- FreeCAD --- exactly what it says on the tin, the recent fixes and UI updates have put it back on the radar for a lot of folks
- Solvespace --- small/light-weight and nimble (a single downloadable executable on Windows last I checked) it has a UI which I never found comfortable
- Dune 3D --- the new kid on the block, it has a remarkably polished UI (it's the only interactive CAD program whose tutorial I made it through more-or-less successfully) --- it's had a number of previous discussions here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228257
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958
Or, of course, one can just code a design using OpenSCAD (and for the Python folks there's https://pythonscad.org/ and so forth).