I’m wondering whether this is useful for 3D printing and whether you can add important measurements when it matters (to make parts that fit.)
It's a lot like Blender, if Blender was a few degrees more usable for CAD. That said, I've yet to try the Blender CAD Sketcher addon (https://www.cadsketcher.com/).
I've been meaning to look for a Fusion360 alternative that can run on linux and doesn't cost $$$$/yr.
It's still weird. That's for sure. But very much usable as a fusion360 replacement for simple to intermediate 3D printing work.
If it looked like FreeCAD was trying to improve the UI I think I'd be throwing some money their way to fund it. But it appears they're happy with the way it works, as these paper cuts have actually gotten worse over time.
It's just FreeCAD, not FOSS-CAD-as-a-whole. Kicad gets better and easier to use each release and I am well aware what a gift it is to engineering work.
but last time I tried it I couldn't figure out how to do almost anything. Fusion 360 and solidworks (and I think onshape) all just "made sense". Throw down a sketch, extrude some surfaces, etc. FreeCAD was a struggle for me and I went back to fusion 360 mostly because I was already familiar with it.
I don’t pay for my Fusion 360.
I've ended up preferring to use cadquery instead, since copilot makes iterating designs with it pretty easy. But it looks like Plasticity might have the kind of workflow I'd like.
> Are there parametric features? eg. Can I say "this line is 35mm long"?
> I want to emphasize to everyone that this is for concept artists. It’s nurbs used to create interesting shapes and fillets. While there are some parametric features, they’re completely de emphasized compared to something like fusion or solidworks
However there are no parametric controls for the elements of your shapes or drawings. Keeping these constraints out of mind certainly helps me get into a flow when modeling, much more akin to subd or poly modeling while maintaining the benefits of NURBS. But for adapting models quickly for more flexible designs isn't /really/ the tool for it. You can take it pretty far though!
I personally use Plasticity to model all kinds of things including 3d-printed items (vacuum wall mounting, iPhone lens mount, storage cases, clips...) All of these items needed to be measured accurately and Plastiticy was able to handle that without issue.
I've been using 3d software for 20+ years, Max, Maya, Blender, XSI, Houdini, Wings3d, Lightwave, Modo, ZBrush, Mudbox... "lots" of 3d software. Some get the job done and some are even a pleasure to use, Plasticity decidedly in my mind does both.