I recently acquired a Kossel type printer and wondered what people use to create objects. I started of using the free online Tinkercad from Autodesk but quickly outgrew that.
I've now started to play with OpenSCad (Open Source CAD) which uses a programming language to generate shapes.
A project I'm currently playing with needs 144 interrupts per revolution and so I am using three lines of holes to generate 3 separate interrupts. The code to generate this object is in the attached image.
It seems to be a very powerful and flexible program.
It's one of the few that allows you to directly set dimensions.
I made a replacement battery cover for an item, complete with "hinge" hooks and spring loaded latches & it clipped in place on the first go. Just done by measuring the required sizes from the device with vernier calipers.
Commercial software what is free today may not be free tomorrow. Companies change pricing models all the time. For that reason I try to stay away. It is not always possible or convenient.
An interesting problem raised it's head. I added a motor mount hub and a fan to the item in the first post and tried to print it. The print was just a random mess. I wondered if maybe the model wasn't manifold so used a microsoft site to fix it. The file went from 3M to 170K and printed correctly. Anyone any idea what could be causing this?
i find autodesk inventor great for making shapes for hardware models
a curved surface has a infinate amount of points ... but is scaled down based on resolution
you would want more points for a animation or graphic over a 1mm resolution of a 3d printer
... also not all obj files are decoded equally
printing a cube only needs 8points (of 3 vectors) = 24 bytes ... kinda mostly