For simple shapes like cubes, cylinders, or spheres I use the workspace: PartĬonstructions I usually start with a sketch in the 'Part Design' area, which I later upholster. Admittedly, as a beginner I found it a bit difficult to use, but for constructions FreeCAD is still my first choice.Ĭurrently, I don't even begin to use all the features of FreeCAD. Starting from simple geometric shapes, to complex designs: FreeCAD is a free CAD program with all the essential features. Nevertheless, describing 3D objects via a script is more complicated than via a GUI for most tasks, which led me to FreeCAD.

Having written certain scripts from time to time, it was not difficult for me to get started with OpenSCAD. One advantage of the script language is that variables can be used for the described elements and thus they can be adjusted centrally. To merge multiple objects into one, they can be joined with 'union()', or subtracted from each other with intersection(). a cube with 15mm edge length: 'cube(15)' or a sphere with 10mm radius: 'sphere(10)'. That means, each object is a function with certain parameters e.g.

Objects are described in OpenSCAD using a simple scripting language. Starting with OpenSCAD, I later ended up with FreeCAD and Blender.

The available CAD programs with OpenSource license can't really keep up with paid products of other manufacturers, nevertheless the thought to get along without license motivates me and therefore to rely on open source software.

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