Software is free if you aren’t using it for commercial use. Fusion 360, onshape, etc. are all free for personal use. And that’s assuming someone didn’t make it already and share it free.
Filament costs $17 for 1kg of perfectly fine plastic. You’d probably use 100g at most for this, so $1.70.
A Bambu A1 mini is $200, and is a modern, high quality printer that would be fine for this project.
So you only need like a half dozen of these projects to come out ahead.
The recent 1.0 release is actually very good. It is probably better at this point than some of the entry level commercial options and most importantly compared to those is not intentionally hobbled in any way.
The time for everyone to stop parroting how “everyone knows” that FreeCAD is unusable is… now. You can go ahead and delete that one; it’s time to learn a new soundbyte.
Come on. The 1.0 release is a huge milestone, but saying it’s better than the entry level commercial options is just disingenuous.
I have actually switched over to it because I run a small 3D printing business as a side income, which isn’t nearly profitable enough to afford an onshape license, and although Fusion360 has an affordable startup license it simply won’t work on Linux and my hackintosh laptop isn’t powerful enough for cad.
It is at a point where it is very usable if you are willing to invest the time needed to learn it, but the learning curve is much, much steeper than that of OnShape or Fusion360, especially if it is your first CAD program. There is also a huge lack of beginner tutorials for it, and the documentation is intended for advanced users, which complicates the learning curve even further, because Fusion360 and OnShape have a huge amount of beginner tutorials for them.
For a hobbyist that just wants to model a few things and not sell them I would always recommend OnShape or Fusion360 over FreeCAD, or even Tinkercad if said person just wants to model extremely simple things.
Yes. The 1.0 release was in November. That Ondsel fork in your video was based on, I believe, the 0.22 version.
The 1.0 release actually prompted Ondsel to shut down entirely, as they are now largely redundant and attempting to monetize a FOSS program was probably doomed from the start anyway…
To be clear, I’m the last one to say one shouldn’t invest in money saving innovation. But the breaking even should be number one priority. I, for instance have all kinds of energy savers in my house that have cost me several hundreds. They’ll only be returned in a few years and I need to manage them properly.
Software is free if you aren’t using it for commercial use. Fusion 360, onshape, etc. are all free for personal use. And that’s assuming someone didn’t make it already and share it free.
Filament costs $17 for 1kg of perfectly fine plastic. You’d probably use 100g at most for this, so $1.70.
A Bambu A1 mini is $200, and is a modern, high quality printer that would be fine for this project.
So you only need like a half dozen of these projects to come out ahead.
On software SIDE, kinda criminal not to mention FreeCAD, it’s FOSS and runs on Linux, unlike the non-free freemium and paid alternatives
But it’s got a long way to go before it’s at usable as the others. Definitely not a good place to start learning cad.
No, it doesn’t.
The recent 1.0 release is actually very good. It is probably better at this point than some of the entry level commercial options and most importantly compared to those is not intentionally hobbled in any way.
The time for everyone to stop parroting how “everyone knows” that FreeCAD is unusable is… now. You can go ahead and delete that one; it’s time to learn a new soundbyte.
Come on. The 1.0 release is a huge milestone, but saying it’s better than the entry level commercial options is just disingenuous.
I have actually switched over to it because I run a small 3D printing business as a side income, which isn’t nearly profitable enough to afford an onshape license, and although Fusion360 has an affordable startup license it simply won’t work on Linux and my hackintosh laptop isn’t powerful enough for cad.
It is at a point where it is very usable if you are willing to invest the time needed to learn it, but the learning curve is much, much steeper than that of OnShape or Fusion360, especially if it is your first CAD program. There is also a huge lack of beginner tutorials for it, and the documentation is intended for advanced users, which complicates the learning curve even further, because Fusion360 and OnShape have a huge amount of beginner tutorials for them.
For a hobbyist that just wants to model a few things and not sell them I would always recommend OnShape or Fusion360 over FreeCAD, or even Tinkercad if said person just wants to model extremely simple things.
Is it much different from 7 months ago?
https://youtu.be/J--QVhGheP4 https://youtu.be/p8Pk1ayx6LQ
Yes. The 1.0 release was in November. That Ondsel fork in your video was based on, I believe, the 0.22 version.
The 1.0 release actually prompted Ondsel to shut down entirely, as they are now largely redundant and attempting to monetize a FOSS program was probably doomed from the start anyway…
That’s good to know, I guess I’ll give it a try again.
Nah it’s a great place to start learning, it’s super easy to start modelling your first simple models in part design.
It’s the more complex designs where it starts to struggle (or maybe I’m just bad idk)
To be clear, I’m the last one to say one shouldn’t invest in money saving innovation. But the breaking even should be number one priority. I, for instance have all kinds of energy savers in my house that have cost me several hundreds. They’ll only be returned in a few years and I need to manage them properly.