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Comment by pcl | Hacker News Reader

I've been using Blender recently to build 3D models for my new 3D printing obsession. The learning curve is significant, but the product seems great. I've gotten decent help from the chatbots, but does anyone here have any suggestions for good non-animation-focused tutorials?

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If you're making technical parts, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and learning parametric cad with fusion 360. There's a ton of learning resources on youtube etc. OnShape seems like a quite promising alternative but I assume there's less material since it's newer.

I've used OnShape a fair bit, and it's pretty solid for technical parts. But recently, I've been doing prints of 3D scans (which work surprisingly well these days!!), and OnShape is sorta the wrong tool for the job for that.

I'm using a crazy combination of pre-processing in Blender and then post-processing in OnShape today, and feel like I should be able to just use Blender for the whole job.

Yeah parametric CAD is better for most 3D printing (non-artistic). FreeCAD 1.0 is actually good now!

I am learning Blender too after failing to learn Maya 20 years ago.

To me, it is like learning to play guitar or piano. You just have to do 1-2 hours a day of practice and do it everyday.

There are so many good youtube videos that it just will depend what you want to do and how you like the person doing the tutorial. Then at some point just start trying to model random objects that interest you.

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