It was great to host the Give It A Go event on behalf of 3D hubs yesterday, so glad to meet up with some passionate students who are so into 3D Printing. Here are some helpful links as an intro to design - slice - print for the beginners. If you have any questions please do raise it here.
The following links / softwares are free to use / download:
Design:
Tinkercad (basic, easy to use) https://www.tinkercad.com
Autodesk 123D Design (basic cad designing tool, you will find other 123D software and their community) http://www.123dapp.com/design
Blender http://www.blender.org
You can also download 3D models for free, the most common ones are thingivers, myminifactory and grabcad. Here is the list of all. http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/download-free-stl-3d-models/
Slice (generate G-Code):
Slic3r http://slic3r.org
Ultimaker Cura http://software.ultimaker.com
Skeinforge http://fabmetheus.crsndoo.com (the latest one was released in 2012)
Print (FDM machine):
Repetier Host http://www.repetier.com (It uses Slic3r as plug in slicing tool)
More available from this link http://3dprintingforbeginners.com/software-tools/
Kind Regards
Yichan
4 Likes
This is really useful stuff, thanks for sharing @Yichan_1!
Filemon
3
One of the most useful posts of the week, cheers @Yichan_1!
Do you any 3D cad that i can do with just typin in the numbers
Filemon
5
Not sure if I understand what you mean. Like numerical input (dimensions) that will create a 3D file?
Location 0,0,0
Box 10 Wide 15 Tall and Width12
you could try something like freeCAD, which I seem to remember has this functionality. For more involved parametric design there is a plugin for Rhino called Grasshopper, for which there are a few free alternatives. We have no experience with those so can’t really recommend one over the other though to be honest.
autoCAD 123D will allow you to define the geometry of a primitive before you drop it in place and then move it where you want too
Glad to hear it went well!
Great post.
Thanks for your help George!
Regards
Yichan
