Today, we talk about CAD software for makers. In this video we first talk about the criteria
that are important for us when it comes to a CAD software and then talk about some of
the software solutions we are using and their advantages and challenges. At the end we will
talk about what software we use for 3D printing, woodworking, laser cutting, and other tasks. Let's look at the criteria that we will use
in the second part to judge the different solutions. Is the software a 2d or a 3d system?
The first any maybe most important difference between CAD systems is if you are looking
for a 2d model that could serve as a template to transfer to your material or that would
enable you to create shapes for a lasercutter or a vinyl plotter – so everything where we
have no thickness but only 2 dimensions. If 2 dimensions are not enough you are looking
for a system that can model things in three dimensions so you can plan a woodworking project
or create a shape for 3D printing.
Does the software support the design of single
parts in a good way? If you work with a 3D program some are better
designing a single parts. For CNC work or 3dprinting you will most of
the time be focused on an individual part and have less of a focus on the connection
between a lot of individual pieces. Does the software support the design of multi
part assemblies in a good way? In woodworking most of the time you will work
with projects that have a lot of parts. This table is a multi part object as it consists
of 4 legs and a tabletop. Overall it contains several objects that are positioned relative
to one another. We will see that some CAD systems are better or worse in the assembly
of several parts.
Does the software offer parametric designs?
An important question is if your software is able to create a parametric design. If
you design a table in a non-parametric software and decrease the size of the table top you
have to manually adjust the table legs. In a parametric software the position of the
legs will automatically be adjusted as they reference the edge of the table rather than
an absolute length. Does the software support artistic sculpting?
In the examples so far we looked at shapes that are square and based on precisely measured
objects. You want to have a look at a different kind of software if you plan to get creative
and work with organic, sculpted shapes. Does it output CAM?
After creating a model we want to do something with it. If you designed something for the
CNC you want to create gcode that the CNC can execute to cut out the shape you designed.
This is called CAM. Some software solutions have a CAM integrated – others don't. Does it support drawings and cutlists?
For traditional furniture it is important to have a good drawing and ideally a cutlist
that helps you to cut everything to the right dimension.
Is the software free?
All the software I talk about in this video don't cost you any money. There is however
an important difference. Some of the solutions are free to use as long as the vendor of the
software thinks it's more benefitial to hook a lot of new users to its solution rather
than getting money from those that are already using it. This could however change every
day. Other solutions are open source software where
you do not only get a CAD system but also the source code – so to say the assembly instructions
for the software and you will always be able to use it. Now let's get started and look at the software
that we are using and solutions that we are using less or not at all. For 2d work we create nearly all projects
in the free and open source software Inkscape.
It is similar to Illustrator so you can draw
simple shapes but also get very artistic and design organic shapes – such as the patterns
for the living cell table design. Besides templates Inkscape can also produce
shapes for a a lasercutter or a CNC machine and it even includes a simple CAM solution
that can create gcode. Inkscape is our go-to, five start rated solution
for everything in two dimensions. The only disadvantage of Inkscape is that
it is not parametric and not able to easily produce measured drawings. If measured 2d
drawings and parametric design are important for you you might want to look at LibreCAD.
It's a great open source 2d CAD program. However when a project requires a parametric 2d shape
you can create it also in a 3d CAD program. Therefore we use LibreCAD very seldomly and
excluded it from the list. The next software on our list is Blender.
Blender is a super powerful 3D modeling and animation open source software. You can create
entire short films in Blender and we use Blender to edit our videos.
Blender is a perfect solution if you want
to sculpt a model or if you want to modify a file before 3D printing it. While it is
excellent for creative modeling Blender is not parametric and while you can use it out
of the box for traditional CAD work it is a bit cumbersome.
It also doesn’t offer technical drawings but what you can do is to import your models
from another CAD software and create a photorealistic rendering in Blender. While there are a few
CAM addons for Blendern none of them seems to be actively developed and maintained. For a long time Sketchup was our go-to solution
for 3D modeling. It is a great solution especially for complex assemblies with a lot of parts.
Another great feature is that while the drawings are mediocre with an addon you can create
a cutlist that is very handy for woodworking projects.
We stopped using Sketchup for a couple of reasons: First the vendor of Sketchup, Trimble, offers
the new version only on the web – which means that they can limit the access easily – in
contrast to the old version that would run forever on your local computer.
Secondly the ruby scripts such as the cutlist
addon mentioned before no longer work in the web version. Thirdly Sketchup is not parametric and the
free version is missing some critical features such as Boolean operations that make it very
hard to use it for single shape 3D printing models or any sculpting work. So for our use cases Sketchup is inferior
to Fusion 360 in all relevant dimensions. The same is by the way true for Onshape. Onshape
doesn’t allow commercial use of the models and automatically publishes them as public
domain models.
With a feature set similar to Fusion and a very restrictive license it’s
not an option. Which brings us to the next solution on the
list: Fusion 360. Fusion is perfect and comes with all the features you ever wanted. It
is parametric, has an easy user interface, allows for sculpting, creates CAM paths for
your CNC and can create renderings as well as technical drawing. So why bother about any other solution? Well
it’s this one sentence in the Fusion license terms: It’s vendor can change the license
at any point in time.
… and afterwards can charge any amount of money. Now you might argue that it is pure paranoia.
Why would a respected company such as Autodesk offer a solution for free, build up a community,
invest in the product just to discontinue it or charge money for it? The reason is pretty simple. They are driven
by shareholder value. If a solution – such as 123d Catch, which used to be another free
Autodesk software doesn't contribute to the companies profit targets it will no longer
be offered for free. If you feel uncomfortable with putting all your eggs in one basket given
that the rent for this basket might be a few hundred bucks going forward have a look at
FreeCAD. As Blender and Inkscape, FreeCAD is open source
software. That means you can download and modify the source code of the software.
Even
if the website closes down you will always be able to use the software and adopt it to
your needs. FreeCAD is still under heavy development but
it comes with a fully parametric design system and is able to create gcode as well as technical
drawings. It is not that great for multipart assemblies but looking at the prototype for
a new assembly system this could change quickly. It might be more difficult to get used to
the software but for us the benefit of using an open source solution easily outweighs the
more difficult learning curve. The last tool on the list is a bit of a niche
solution. With OpenScad you create your model with a simple programming language. The software
is too complicated for multipart assemblies, doesn’t allow sculpting and it’s difficult
to create a technical drawing. We mainly use it to create models that need complex parameters
like these voronoi vent covers and to create parametric models for Thingiverse.
Which brings us to the last section of this
video: When do we use which software? When we draw something we usually use Inkscape.
It’s easy to draw for example the shape of this Klingon pushstick design. We also
use Inkscape to send designs directly to the vinyl cutter. For the laser cutter we create SVG files as
this tool holder in Inkscape and send the SVG files with K40Whisperer to the laser. When a lot of parts have to fit on a single
sheet we use the open source software deepnest.io to arrange the parts in a space saving way. When the measurements for a 2d design are
complex as for this coin sorter we create the drawings in FreeCAD and export the DXF
to K40Whisperer. When a 3D printed design such as this router
jig needs to be configured with a lot of parameters we create it in OpenScad to make it easier
for people to configure their own version on Thingiverse. When a 3d printing project doesn’t need
to be configured online we use FreeCAD.
There honestly wasn't a project on our list that
FreeCAD would not be able to handle when it comes to the design of 3D prints. For creating or modifying STLs from Thingiverse
or other sources Blender is the most convenient tool. It is easy to cut away part of the model,
merge several models together or modify the mesh.
For the CNC we also moved from Fusion 360
to FreeCAD. We are not experts on the CNC and while using Fusion never managed to wrap
our heads around the more complex options of adaptive paths and all the other advanced
CAM features. A real expert on the CNC most likely doesn’t
want to use the FreeCAD CAM module due to the lack of features. For us this lack of
features is actually an advantage as it means we have less possibilities to mess things
up. For woodworking and metalworking projects
choosing the right solution is quite difficult.
We have some of our old models still in Sketchup
and it’s cumbersome to work with a non-parametric system once you got the experience of working
parametric. We did some models in Fusion and are missing
the the possibility to create a cutlist. FreeCAD has some possibilities to create a bill of
material – which is a very good starting point to create a cutlist in another software such
as cut micro. Arranging several parts in FreeCAD is either
simple or parametric. Moving parts in FreeCAD is easy but these connections are not parametric.
There is a possibility for parametric assemblies but it’s quite complicated as each part
has to be saved in an individual file – which is especially for woodworking projects where
most parts are simple boards not practical. The great thing about open source software
is that everyone can improve the software. So on GitHub you can find a modified version
of FreeCAD that actually offers a quite powerful parametric assembly. As soon as this feature
is stable FreeCAD should be able to provide everything you need to model furniture.
Till
then we will have to work with assembly options rather on the level of Sketchup than what
Fusion 360 is offering. This was a quick overview of the CAD software
we are using. It's a very subjective listing and most likely your personal preferences
are different. Are we missing something? What software do you use? Let us know in the comments.
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for a look at future projects.