What Program Do You Use?

[Tony]

I was sitting here thinking about a new project to put my 3D printer back to work, and since it has been so long, I no longer have a program installed on my computer. So it got me to thinking.....

What program do y'all use to design your prints?

In the past, I mainly used Fusion 360, and may use it again, unless you provide me with a better option. I will also need to download a slicer as well, but i will likely just go back to Cura.

 

[LooseNut]

Old post, I'm sure you've settled on something by now.
I use Fusion 360 and Cura, since I use Inventor at work, it's close to the same thing.
I have a Ender 6SE and a CR10 with mods, sold my 3. It was setup to run TPU and since I no longer have a need for that I got a smoking offer I couldn't refuse, took the money and gave him the setup.

 

[Tony]

Never settle! When you settle, you become complacent lol.

But, I do use Fusion 360 for a lot of the things I do, but for basic stuff, I just use Tinkercad. So simple it's hard to do simple things though, like a filet of chamfer takes a TON of work in Tinkercad vs Fusion. And yea, Cura is the best slicer out there, I never even looked at anything else.

With that said though, I still look for other programs that may work easier or better. But "better" may be hard to come by with how powerful Fusion is.

 

[LooseNut]

Thing with Fusion is you can run it free and once or twice a year they let you "Try out" the extensions for free hoping to entice a sale. I actually had it set up before I bought my first printer, so it was just a button click from sending models to Cura.
If they come up with a mind reading interface I'm in!

 

[LooseNut]

I learned Autocad on a 88 machine with 8" floppies and have been using Autodesk products for years. I think Master Cam was V3 when we got seats and I went through the classes. I still have the Coffee mug and use it.

 

[Tony]

yea, I have not used it enough to know what the paid version has that is better than the free version. I'm not that good with it. Honesty, I can create a basic design in Tinkercad, and if I need to do anything more complex or just faster like chamfers, I just send it over to fusion and stick them in there and call it done. I mean, click on a corner, tell it what radius and DONE! Not sure why they cannot put it in Tinkercad.

 

[LooseNut]

There may be a way to do it, just have to "Tinker" with it.
I'm just glad we aren't trying to do it with a Commodore 64 or Pet 16... or worse! A TRS80!

 

[Tony]

haha, true that.

And there is a way. You create a square, and place it. Then you get a round and set it to the size you want and cut out the square you just placed. Then take the square you just placed and cut and turn it into a hole. Then place the hole square thing over your part to remove the material to chamfer/filet. Of course you can save custom tools, but I don't know why it's not a part of the program.

 

[LooseNut]

Sounds way more complicated than it needs to be.

 

[Tony]

Most definitely.