Would anyone be interested in a basic 3D modelling class?

Discussion
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Hi All,

I’ve got many years experience using Solidworks. It’s it’s very expensive to buy so would probably not be the best solution for Makerspace peeps, but I’ve got a licence on a work laptop so happy to give tutorial/advice/introductions.

I’ve looked at Onshape and Fusion 360 recently too:

Onshape looks really promising, but they’ve just changed their policy to not allow ANY private documents in the free version. All needs to be shared publicly. Maybe not a problem unless you’re working on something that you need to keep confidential. 'Cos it’s cloud based,it’ll run in the browser and works on any old PC/tablet/phone…

Fusion 360 works really well and is quite easy to use. It’s is probably the best bet for modelling anything reasonably complex on a PC, but has a bit of a learning curve. Free for “startups” worth less than $100K

Sketchup isn’t really up to modelling anything complex , nor was TinkerCAD last time I looked.

Happy to bore anyone to death with my opinions on this stuff. Just ask!

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We also have a suite of AutoDesk software

@unknowndomain has the details…

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I am really up for that!

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@cjjharries that seems like a very strong show of interest!

Do you want to choose a date?

Just let @events know

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Yeah SolidWorks is really great but super expensive (£4500 last time I checked) that’s why I recommended Onshape, also because it’s browser-based so no installations required.

I people do want a more advanced thing then yeah maybe we could do a SolidWorks or Rhino session.

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I will but first I need a bit of time to plan out what people should get out of the session. It would probably be in late November/early December.

Anyone have a preferred day for this?

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A weekday evening in December

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This is a brilliant idea, thanks Christian, I would love, love, love to learn about this.

Have been doing sketchup, it’s good to know now that it’s not really worth it.

The 3d printer inductor person - am so sorry, in a rush, I can’t remember his name - got people to download cura, what do those with experience think of it?

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Cura is just the software that “slices” your 3D model into the layers that the 3D printer makes. (Think of it like JobControl on the laser cutter. It sits between your design and the machine and makes sure the machine gets “buildable” information)

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Thanks Tom, what a learning curve this is!

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I didn’t say Sketchup was a waste of time - but it’s not accurate enough to use for CAD. It’s great for other things though!

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+1 for interested

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It has 0.000001mm accuracy, what do you mean it isn’t accurate enough for CAD?

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It treats circles as polygons for a start.

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@cjjharries what do you make of the ‘no private documents’ situation of Onshape? That would put me off, personally.

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I’m sure there are people who can use it as a viable CAD program but for me it’s sort of the equivalent of using paint instead of Photoshop and Illustrator, sure you can make stuff with it but there are so many betters ways to design stuff.

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I see what you mean