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Comment by aynyc | Hacker News Reader

Can blender replace sketchup? I just found out sketchup isn't free anymore.

Sort of. It can do much more than sketchup, but the interface is not designed for quick drafting like sketchup is. Blender doesn't shield you from the more complex parts of 3D design like sketchup does, but if you learn it you will have a better grasp of the system as a whole.

I haven’t really used blender, but I doubt it would be a great replacement for most use cases. Fusion360 on the other hand is free and a great replacement!

Blender is an artsy program and development tends to focus on the artsy side. fusion360 is an engineering program and development tends to focus on that use case. Not to say you cant use it for ether purpose. but loosely, blender is better when you only really care about what it looks like and fusion360 is better when you care not how it looks but about the details of the dimensions of your thing.

personally I enjoy modeling in a parametric program like fusion360 more, I guess it appeals to my inner programmer, but nothing I make could reasonably be called "art".

Fusion360 has a big learning curve for me. As a once a year hobbyist, not sure if it's worth the investment to learn. I think you are right that blender is probably worse than Fusion for basic carpentry planning, etc..

Blender imo is a much larger learning curve than fusion. In my experience Fusion or solidworks are about fundamentally how to construct a model. Whereas blender is much more oriented towards someone who may be more technically minded. As well as being just for surface models not real world objects.

I suspect that too. If I learn Blender to replace Fusion/SketchUp, I can do other stuff with Blender. But I'm sticking to basic home DIY. I might just spend some time on Fusion.

Depends on what you're doing with it. I'm an architect who have been using SketchUp professionally for 20 years now, and I use Blender for hobby (Geometry Nodes stuff). For architecture work, Blender absolutely can NOT replace SketchUp, unfortunately (it doesn't even have a universal Section tool, for example), even though it's an incomparably more powerful program in every other area.

> universal Section tool

Can't you get the same thing with a boolean modifier?

Illustration: https://i.stack.imgur.com/FlM1E.png

Technically, but you need to copy and maintain that modifier for all objects. Even if you did that, usability is non-existent. Just to turn it off for a moment you'd have to select the objects with the right modifier and disable them using an obscure shortcut (holding Alt) and even then it's notoriously slow and finicky anyways--not even in the same universe as SketchUp's section tool.

DIY home repair. Right now, I need some fences repair, just want sketch that out, plus a couple of small container sheds.

In terms of ability, sure, Blender can replace SketchUp (and more), but I don't think it'd be worth the learning hassle just for that. The free SketchUp web version should suffice for small DIY stuff. You can always bring your model into Blender for further refining/rendering anyways (there's a good import addon).

There is a free version? Link?

I want a low learning curve application for home DIY stuff. I tried Fusion, just a bit more complex that I would like, I supposed Blender is ever more so.

Free web version: https://www.sketchup.com/products/sketchup-for-web There is a list of differences between this and their more professional versions if you scroll down. It doesn't support more advanced stuff (like plugins) but all the fundamentals are there and it is pretty performant.

It can do that to some extent, though the CAD side of it is still a very lacking.

You're right, it's not free any more: Burger King charges $0.50 a packet!

But you can make your own using blender:

https://www.food.com/recipe/blender-ketchup-89086

Oh, sketchup, not ketchup. Never mind. ;)

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