Well, I have recently changed jobs. The upside: better place. The down side: no more access to Solidworks. So if I wanna keep modeling I'm gonna have to learn something new. I downloaded Sketchup, so we'll see how that goes. What other proggies do people around here use?
I've learnt sketchup real quick, free one is awesome with the right plug ins! It's also really easy to do nice intricate stuff For example I've got a thread in fan art if you want to see what sketchup can do in relatively newbie hands Ps. My wife is a bleeding expert in solid works but she won't teach me whaaa
Maya and Softimage are kinda overkill for 3D printing, isn't it? I know they ae top of the line animation proggies, but how are they in the accuracy realm?
with me using maya for shapeways, good enough especially i use polished WSF as my main material, and pretty damn accurate for FUD i do add a tiny bit 0.1mm for stuff like pegs that require friction when printing in polished WSF i use maya mainly because my job involves it (feature film visual effects)
You're going to feel limited no matter what you try after having used Solidworks. I'd personally advise to staying away from Sketchup. You're limited what you can do with your designs if you go down that route. FreeCAD, DraftIT, or BRL-CAD are what I would recommend. Really though, as long as you find a program that can export IGS files you should be fine.
DraftIT is a 2D cad, but I've eyeballed FreeCAD. BRL-CAD looks weird. Can't find pics of the interface. I've found Autodesk Fusion, and it looks about as close to Solidworks as you can get. However it locks up whenever I go to use it. Plus, the program says my graphics card is insufficient.
How do you mean limited? Genuine question because I haven't found too many limitations myself, my wife is a whizz in solid works, and she even thinks sketchup is pretty expansive
Meant limited as in what you can do with the files once you design something. Not the actual design process itself. My bad. =)
