🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@PCOWandre can you elaborate on #1 a bit?

@icedquinn

Right, I got that.

openscad languages limitation might be an issue, and something that generates the openscad code does sound like the right solution. Though im not sure I'd want to roll my own.

From the look of it im not sure openscad format is a "language" at all. There doesnt seem to be conditional logic or any of the elements of a turing complete language. Looks more like a file format for defining shapes.. I'd put it in the same vein as something like the file format for SVGs.

@meowski

@PCOWandre

I am not seeing anything about a free tier here:

https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/pricing

If I can find the truely free tier you speak of I might be ok with it not being opensource.. All I know is when i looked i dont see it and the "free" tier I was able to get and currently have explicitly stated it was only granted for a year.

@icedquinn

From what ive seen so far OpenSCAD right now is looking like my favorite...

@meowski

@icedquinn

As much as I love functional programming clojure, and even more so lisp, just make my skin crawl. If it used any other functional language I would jump on that in a heartbeat!

Most models I am likely to do will be geometrically simple. A lot of it will be enclosures. Its unlikely I will have too much need to do anything "artistic" where there is a lot of fine detail. The only reason i need high resolution of 0.1mm isnt for fine detail but rather for precision fitting of parts. though also ensuring surfaces are relatively smooth is part of that.

@meowski

@ejg indeed, in fact in my notes/todo for this task (improving my workshop) using a makerspace is one of the points I have that I am considering.

One strong motivator for me to use a makerspace is simply that my labs and workspaces at the moment are all at my philly home but I spend more time away from philly than at philly.

So what I will likely wind up doing is buy a CNC and 3d printer for philly and then rely on maker spaces when im in the netherlands. There are some amazing ones with high end tech.

That said, sadly the makerspaces near and in philly that I've seen arent nearly as nice as the ones in and around Utrecht. So I will almost certainly still need to buy my own machines even if i wind up using a makerspace in the netherlands.

@icedquinn

hmm openscad sounds interesting, but "all code" sounds restrictive. Would be nice to see some sort of cross where you define the shapes in code and coordinates, it renders it in a 3d image to see, and you could manipulate it with it hte mouse to tweak the coordinate values.

The nice part about all code would be that it would be git/merge friendly (huge plus), AND would make it way easier to dynamically change the design if you needed each print out to be slightly different. For example if i did an arduino case I might need to 4 different designs depending on how many stacked modules are on the arduino. So instead of designing 4 different cases that were similar and maintaining them all in parallel I could just design it once and have the height as a parameter.

So yea openscad or something similar in nature sounds appealing, but as you said also sounds tedious if you really have to do it **all** in code.

@meowski

@icedquinn

I am not trying to build a single thing. Thats the problem. The projects ill need to build will change as quickly as the direction of the wind as I have diverse hobby and professional needs.

For example one thing i need to build is the framework for a cryogenic cooling system, which will mostly be done with the CNC cutting out metal struts and such. Another thing I'd like to build is a smart chess board and chess pieces, yet another is a peltier powered near-cryogenic liquid-cooler (basically a 3 or 4 level stacked peltier configuration)...

so yea, ill be building all sorts of things and thus need a pretty versatile setup.

@meowski

@icedquinn

might be worth looking at blender then.. I dunno blender just feels like a tool not intended for this purpose and any plugins that try to fix that wont be as good as picking a tool actually intended for engineering design.

@meowski

@icedquinn To clarify I know that on the 3d printer I'm looking for a bare minimum of 0.1mm resolution or better. I know that rules out most printers that are less expensive,especially when you couple it with my need for a relativly large printing volume.

@icedquinn ahh ok, i was looking at the software by the same name. cool. I think for a 3d printer im going to need high-resolution and dual filament as minimum requirements... I will likely need a pretty generous size as ill probably be printing relatively large objects.

@icedquinn

Does Scerchok enable things like solids of revolution designs? One of the thing that was nice about fusion 360 is you could basically just create solids from 2d sketches by applying things like a solid of revolution to it. I presume for blender to be useful it would have to do the same, perhaps this plugin adds that?

@meowski

@icedquinn Ahh just checked, Prusa is the slicer, not the design software... ok still useful but I assume all slicers work ont he same file formats so I think picking the design software might be the more critical decision here, correct me if im wrong.

@icedquinn not sure i heard of Prusa yet, ill check that out.

@icedquinn

What would be your first choice for software when 3d designing?

@PCOWandre

@icedquinn

I havent used blender in many years, but from what i know of it, specifically the work flow, it would seem more suited for 3d models and animations than for physical machining. Machined objects usually have a lot of symmetries and uniformity to their design since they are functional more than aesthetic. It just doesnt seem what blender is intended for. Blender feels more like working with clay making arbitrary shapes where CAD feels more like working with a straight edge and technical drawings...

It would be like doing a blueprint of a house in blender. Sure you could do it, but man that seems way more convoluted than doing it in CAD software.

@meowski

@PCOWandre ahh ok that makes sense. So the cad software at least has some sense of discrete parts and can break it down when it comes time to manufacture it...

Now the only question is, what printer and CNC do I buy that is both metal capable and feature rich from a software compatability standpoint (I'd imagine some CNC or 3d printers night not work on open standards or something that i need to look otu for).

@PCOWandre I was looking at fusion 360 and played witht he free tier. It looked awesome and indeed seemed to be nice and easy to use.

My issue with choosing that is that anything i design will be open-source. The free-tier however is really just a long-lasting free trial of 1 year and they dont seem to offer a truely free (as in perpetually free tier). So while I could accept a non-open source product the lack of a perpetual free tier looks like a deal breaker to me.

I can afford to pay for it, but if im doing open-source i want to ensure the tools i use are free and accessible to others who wish to contribute. So this is the only reason I might have to rule out fusion 360 even though otherwise I'd agree its the top choice.

Also I would love to hear any input from @meowski if you can help, thanks.

@icedquinn

@icedquinn

Thanks, yea thats kinda what i figured on the 3d side.. though im not clear how you go from a CAD design to the slicer. Presumable a cad design consists of multiple parts in one design fitted together. The 3d printer, as well as the CNC (depending on which part) will handle the parts indivudally.

So I presume there is some way in the CAD program to break up your design into files where each file represents a different part in a single design. Then you send the 3d ones off tp the slicer, then the CNC ones off to whatever handles that.

Also, like you, I am less clear on the CNC side than the 3d side (though im not all **that** clear on the 3d side either except at a high level, where you seem to have worked with it more).

@meowski