I did not realize that learning Fusion 360 was going to be such a huge chapter in my current journey. Looking back, I'm kind of stumped at how I avoided it as long as I did.
I would now put learning CAD in the same category of mandatory life skill as learning to code. The ability to translate what you see in your mind to something that can be repeatably fabricated is an incredible power move, akin to learning how to communicate complex ideas with empathetic language.
My advice is to start by following this tutorial step-by-step. It's a 90 minute video that took me ten days to get through. Step two is to take an existing project and change it in a significant way. Step three is to create something from scratch which solves a problem that you have.
Thank you for this! I was completely unaware that it was out there, and I really dig a lot of what the creator is going for. For example, I'm not a Blender user but lots of people are, so the idea that he created a WebSockets-powered real time bridge is the kind of innovation that makes the world better.
However, I do have two nits. The first is the overwhelming focus on pricing model as a feature. I get it; SaaS is frustrating AF. However, I also understand that it's very difficult to build a functioning business around tooling that is free. There's a huge number of people who just can't understand why we don't have free Fusion/Z-Brush equivalents. It's easy to fix... just set up a $5-10M/year donation schedule to a group of people currently working for Autodesk and you could definitely have an OSS competitor to Fusion in a year or two.
In reality, people using powerful tools are used to paying a bit of money for those tools, and I honestly feel like that's how it should be. The people screaming the loudest for free-as-in-beer CAD that doesn't suck are also likely the worst customers that you wish you didn't have. Anyone who has ever noticed that non-profit clients always want to argue about billing the most will be nodding.
Second nit is that as awesome as Plasticity is, it's really a modelling tool (like Z-Brush) that is influenced by CAD, not the other way around. And I believe that there's a huge market segment for this! Game asset creators come to mind.
But there are huge swathes of workflow functionality that Fusion nails which just don't seem to be present in Plasticity. There's no component hierarchy, no timeline. The whole relationship between sketches and operations is lost in favour of just slicing through stuff... which is cool until you need to change your primary enclosure dimensions and expect every aspect of your design to re-calculate and adapt.
There's more to "parametric" than being able to change parameters on a tool. I try to describe to friends that in a tool like Fusion, the geometry itself is a parameter, the operations are like lambda functions, and the timeline can be rolled backwards and forwards like git commits.
When you have the lightbulb moment for all of this, it's really hard not to be annoyed when people attempt to shame you for not using FreeCAD, as is happening elsewhere in this thread.
I'm with you on the timeline/component stuff. I came from SolidWorks and SolidEdge and I still pine for a complete CAD package that is actually functional. Fusion360 is foreign to me and I doubt I'll ever be in a place where I could afford an annual SolidEdge subscription. Note, the community edition is free [0]. I may have to brush off my CAD skills and give it a go.
> The people screaming the loudest for free-as-in-beer CAD that doesn't suck are also likely the worst customers that you wish you didn't have.
These are often ambitious hobbyists who have quite some free time for their hobby, but little money (also since they don't earn money by using the CAD program).
The most rational choice would in my opinion to sell very cheap licenses without any support to these people: you don't loose any money because they wouldn't be customers for the expensive licenses anyway; on the other hand, because of some of these people's devotion, it makes the CAD software a possibly better choice for many companies because of the existence of more people to hire who know the software quite well.
Not only that, but after learning Fusion 360 (or similar software) a very interesting world was opened when I started learning G code so that I could write, optimize and modify Post Processors
Learning G code allows you to start using CNC machines - even a simple 2 axis plasma cutter can do interesting things. 3 axis machine centers can make things that are quite remarkable. I am now stepping into 5 axis.
When 3D printing became accesible I joined the subreddit for inspiration of what use I could put it to and the opposite happened. Everyone was making plastic toys and ironic reaches like an “egg holster”. Every so often someone would be able to fabricate a replacement part for something which I thought was the coolest. But beyond that. There wasn’t too much to be motivated by. I never got into it.
Here I wonder the same thing. Not that everything joyful must be productive. But if there was a way to apply this to something that was neat in the real world I think I’d be far more motivated to learn the skill. And enjoy it more.
I can empathize with your perspective. For everything genuinely useful thing like the Gridfinity storage ecosystem, there's a mountain of future landfill. There's only so many wifi router wall-mount brackets you need.
However, I am going to gently push back by pointing out that you're not connecting the dots between knowing how to use CAD to create solutions to problems, and having cheap 3D printers available that can make those solutions real.
In other words, your mistake might be looking externally for what you should be making. It's not so much a failure of imagination but not training your brain to make the possibility of creating objects one of the first steps on the path to problem solving. Perhaps a good analogy is how people go from asking GPT-4 things they've heard other people try to making asking GPT-4 about everything as normal as brushing your teeth.
So like, as much as it's awesome that I could realize I can print my own reels (for pick and place) from an STL off Thingiverse, my main use of my 3D printer at this point is to print off plastic prototypes of circuit boards and custom enclosures that I'm working on. Not only does this allow me to verify clearance (I actually saved myself five digits and months of pain recently by realizing that the 1/4" audio jacks would not allow my board to be inserted as designed) but it gives me something I can put in people's hands. I've found that, over many years, you can describe things to people and they will nod like they get it, and then when I put the real thing in their hands, they say something roughly like, "oh, this is what you meant". Which I used to find frustrating, and now I just accept it.
Right now, I'm working with the company in China that makes hard shell cases for basically every consumer product. They are sending me revisions of the insert that will hold everything safely. I print them off and then send photos and measurements back of how everything fits (or doesn't) which completely avoids the expensive and slow process of them making a mold, sending me a sample and me testing it. I've literally saved months and thousands doing this. It's awesome.
Similarly, you might have heard that injection molding is incredibly expensive to get started with and that there are fussy design rules you must follow. Well, engineers have recently clued in to the realization that we can essentially 3D print the molds, saving thousands and many lost weeks. Right now there's this crazy arbitrage where about 90% of product designers don't appear to realize that this is a thing, yet.
I could go on and on. The only takeaway is that as you normalize CAD and 3D printing as a go to tool the same way you probably think screwdrivers are pretty normal, you realize that you have more things you need a 3D printer for than things you need a screwdriver for. And that escalation can be really fast.
Addendum 1: Also, remember that it's not just 3D printing. Creating photo-realistic renders of something that doesn't exist yet can save the day. But there's also subtractive processes like CNC which is in some ways even more useful than additive processes like 3D printing. There's a Kickstarter right now for Carvera Air that a lot of folks should get in on.
However, I would recommend the open source https://solvespace.com! It hits a sweet spot between features vs complexity/learning effort.
(And as a programmer I dig the terminal aesthetics)
I learned CAD / fusion for both work and a burgeoning interest in 3d printing. I'm a product manager in my day job. Being proficient in CAD and do simple renderings has been extremely helpful with work.
I'm now looking at going down the Blender / render rabbit hole as Fusion can only get you so far.
Cool! I keep telling my SO that she would be able to express things better at work, too.
What sort of problems do you hope Blender can address that aren't tackled by Fusion?
In a similar vein, I also recommend taking a long look at game development engines, as they are in the same category of tool that have many uses beyond making games:
- quick UI mockups
- environment walk-throughs
- product demos
- VR environments
- best way IMO to teach coding to kids
I use and generally like Unity, although if I was starting over today, I'd be taking a good look at Godot.
TL;DR if you need to do interactive renders/movies a gamedev engine might actually be more generally useful to a coder than Blender.
>What sort of problems do you hope Blender can address that aren't tackled by Fusion?
I felt that Fusion was limited with the textures and materials available for rendering. I think Fusion is good enough for internal purposes but I want better looking renders for external uses.
I've worked on scrappy product teams that lacked a dedicated industrial designer. Usually, the mechanical engineer on the team would come up with a design and I'd come up with simple renderings for marketing docs, show investors, etc.
Most of the industrial designers I follow on linkedin all use Blender, I hadn't even considered Unity, I'll check it out.
Not really! Many of the major CAD packages have built-in or add-on packages for FEA. Some of them will even do dynamic multiphysics simulations -- so for example you could model an internal combustion engine, simulate the combustion cycle, and measure the torque.
(That's not a beginner-level project, to be clear)
I'm a decently able self-taught CAD user now, of the level where I can reasonably quickly pick up a new piece of software. And yet... I've lost count of the number of times I've reinstalled FreeCAD thinking "this time it will be different"... and then quickly removed it again. Compared to anything reasonable it's just an awful hot mess to try and figure out, with huge quirks, a weird interface, and unhelpful error messages.
Given the reasonable pricing, I'm interested to try Plasticity, although it's not strictly CAD in the sense of Fusion360/Solidworks/etc - it's currently more of a modelling program. It's also doesn't have the parametric + history features that are really valuable in other products.
The truth is, we're crying out for a decent open-source CAD program. Everything currently available (FreeCAD, OpenSCAD, SolveSpace, CadQuery, etc.) has huge usability and/or feature deficits compared to the commercial offerings.
To quote myself from a previous blog post of mine:
> I tried and tried and tried to get into [FreeCAD]. It promises so much, but there are two fatal flaws in my opinion. First, the UI is a nightmare. I have no idea which "workbench" I am supposed to be using, and there are so many similar choices available, each with subtly different tools and ... I gave up trying to make sense of it. Secondly, even when following tutorials to get some basic modelling done, I found lack of sensible keyboard control and having to click almost everything a real distraction. Not a good experience.
It's an absolute nightmare to use. Really the worst UX I've ever seen.
I'm not saying that Fusion is the best CAD software, but FreeCAD is worth less than you pay for it. The UI/UX is in the bottom three most user-hostile nightmares I've ever experienced.
Time spent thinking "I'm sure it's just me" in FreeCAD is time you will never get back.
I use Blender for CAD. It's not designed for that, but I've developed a particular workflow that fits my needs quite well. I use it to design everything from small parts to buildings. I've used FreeCAD, but it's just too time-consuming.
mind elaborating on this? as an outsider to CAD software i don't know the landscape — i'm finding some concerning things about fusion360 when i search for pros/cons but i'm not sure how to weigh the opinions, e.g how relevant the commercial lock-in could be for a hobbyist
One time FreeCAD user: FreeCAD couldnt solve a very basic constraint. Every time it got stuck and said it's too hard. Fusion360 had 0 issues.
Licensing is a thing with FreeCAD but last time I looked it was free (as in beer) for hobbyists. The grey zone is where you turn your hobby into a small scale business.
I would now put learning CAD in the same category of mandatory life skill as learning to code. The ability to translate what you see in your mind to something that can be repeatably fabricated is an incredible power move, akin to learning how to communicate complex ideas with empathetic language.
My advice is to start by following this tutorial step-by-step. It's a 90 minute video that took me ten days to get through. Step two is to take an existing project and change it in a significant way. Step three is to create something from scratch which solves a problem that you have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK60ROb2RKI