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Comment by franl | Hacker News Reader

I would pay money for said course. I'm trying to piece together my own homegrown manufacturing curriculum through a combination of books, googling, diy projects, and YouTube. I don't expect to create world class engineering marvels on my own, but to be able to develop such a polished finished product as OP would be incredible. Any tips on where to start as far as 3D modeling and enclosure design goes?

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OpenSCAD! http://www.openscad.org/documentation.html

It might not be where you end, but it's a great place to start. (fwiw, I do all my 3D design with OpenSCAD. Been using it since 2011.)

Very cool! Thank you! How do you find it helpful to think in terms of code that generates a design vs. jumping right into the visual aspect of a design (I'm assuming the latter is how a typical 3D design program works)? In other words, why do you prefer this to other more traditional 3D design programs?

The parts in my designs are fairly simple and mathematical (rectangles with holes like Lego Technic), which makes them good candidates for OpenSCAD. My product designs, though, are first made by hand in a playing-with-Lego-like way (3D printing parts made in OpenSCAD as needed). Beyond that, I like having the precision of source code for my designs. Like source code, I can easily check them into source control and track changes over time.

sounds like an interesting idea but as pointed out above, with these kinds of projects, equipment access is the main hurdle.. I use Autodesk Fusion 360 for the modeling. I really like it though to be honest it's the only 3d program I ever tried and I just picked it up recently

Thumbs up for Fusion 360 - for a fully fledged production ready CAD/CAM package you can't beat the price, and it's easy to get starting.

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