Tinkercad – Create 3D digital designs with online CAD | Hacker News Reader

Tinkercad – Create 3D digital designs with online CAD

tinkercad.com

59 pointsevo_916 comments

If you're looking for a more “serious” CAD package without paying “serious” money, check out OnShape and Fusion 360. Both of these packages are industrial-strength CAD (parametric, history-based, and constraint-solving) and can be used for free.

OnShape (https://www.onshape.com/) has a frontend that runs entirely in the browser on the desktop, so you can even run it on Linux, and has apps with real create/edit capability for phones and tablets.

If OnShape doesn't have everything you want, or you run into its storage limits and don't want to pay for more space, check out Fusion 360. It's free for hobbyists. It only runs on Mac and Windows, but it's got a ton more features than OnShape and no storage limits.

I played with Fusion 360 before I found OnShape and wasn't able to make much headway, even after checking out some of Autodesk's training videos. When I found OnShape, I watched its training videos and got a handle on the basic CAD concepts. When I ran into OnShape's limits, I was able to go back to Fusion 360 and understand it. Now I use Fusion 360 to design parts for hobby-level 3D printing and it's great.

Just to clarify, unless you're a student/educator, Fusion360 is only free for 30 days....after that you have to pay.

This page says it's free for hobbyists for as long as you need it. http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/try-buy

Actually, you can use it for free if you're a business making less than $100,000/year. Or something like that, I forgot the exact terms, but it's quite generous. The terms are shown when you first install and register the program.

Thanks for mentioning onshape and their Linux support, will definitely try. In the meantime (desktop based, multi platform) FreeCAD [1] has been great for me.

1) http://freecadweb.org/

The stability wasn't there last time this was posted, but maybe they've made some improvements. I do wish there was a distinction being made between maker-quality and production-quality software in some of these areas - being an engineer that uses CAD on a daily basis, this is cute but closer to CAPD (Computer Assisted Part Design) or some such. Not to denigrate their work, but this is not a full-fledged CAD package - but it is above and beyond for hobbyist / maker grade use.

I mean, it's nice that these things are moving online, are cheap or free & all that but it's not quite the same as using a dedicated tool like Solidworks. The average hobbyist who plays with a 3D printing program like this is thinking small: only for 3D printing. I've dealt with files that people want to be made on a mill or designed by a shop & the file ends up having to be re-created along with being imprecise.

Tinkercad's a toy, and hasn't seen any significant improvements for the last 2.5 years.

The creators of Solidworks started a new company to do online CAD: check out onshape.com.

Is there something like this, which enables me to edit scenes with humans? Like Poser or DAZ 3D?

I would DIE to have something like that in the browser!

I never really understood why anyone would like to run anything that requires long sessions of work - in a browser? A CAD program seems like the antithesis of a good case for a web app.

The GUI can never be quite as good, always quirky menus, seldom an undo, a backspace in the wrong place can send your latest changes into oblivion, and the GUI typically feels like it's one the verge to collapse.

It can work 'OK' or even great for short tasks- like Jira (that has all of the above) - but if you spend some serious time in a web app, it really sucks.

OK, it runs everywhere, I get that.

Most good web-based editors have none of the drawbacks you've listed. I'm not familiar with Tinkercad, but http://clara.io has:

- traditional-style menus

- infinite undo. Checkout the history tab -- you can see your entire history with a timestamp and an icon saying who made the change. Click on any change to undo that change.

- backspace is captured

- it's continuously saving, so it's almost impossible to lose your changes. If you lose your internet connection, it uses the browser standard onbeforeunload dialog box to prevent you from leaving before they are saved.

There are some significant advantages to choosing a web app: collaboration, change control, access to cloud computing for CPU-intense tasks like rendering, as well as the avoidance of not having to install license dongles or license managers.

Sure. With a significant effort you can almost be as good as a native application, except not quite.

The benefits you mentioned is not exclusive to web apps. There are no inherent benefits, except perhaps licence management, which benefits the service provider more, and the fact that there already is a server side to use for features like collaboration.

There are two closely coupled benefits: ease of installation (one machine to do so) and ease of upgrade (again, single machine).

That said, I much prefer desktop applications to web-based ones, especially when it's not me who hosts them. They may disappear overnight, they may break overnight, I don't control backups for them, I need constant internet access to use them (sometimes I work off-line, so this is a big no-no).

And web applications on modern hardware (which I don't own, because why should I? my Dell D830 works satisfactory) are almost as fast as desktop applications on my older hardware. Meaning, they're slow.

Not in the browser, but there is the open-source MakeHuman:

http://www.makehuman.org/

Looks like as easy to use as SketchUp. Sadly Google sold SketchUp, and the new company turned SketchUp in a trialware product.

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