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Comment by tra3 | Hacker News Reader

This is gorgeous. I really need to hunker down and learn 3d modeling. It unlocks so many options from cnc to 3d printing.

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In my experience, having a project/goal will make it do-able for you. You have both the motivation and an target (dare I say, North Star?) in sight.

You’re exactly right..that’s how I end up learning tech stuff. It’s not working very well with modelling though. I’ve set my sights too high, the projects are too involved

I found zeroing in on a specific package and learning the specifics of the parametric modeling AND a particular end goal to be useful. Doubly so if the YouTuber is making lots of videos on other topics that might be helpful. I learned on an olllld Fusion360 tutorial series from NYC CNC, but my more recent FreeCAD learning has been from MangoJelly: https://www.youtube.com/@MangoJellySolutions

I've had a lot of fun with onshape, it's free for public projects

tinkercad

TinkerCAD is easy to get started with and is a fine starting point. If you want to go farther than TinkerCAD can reasonably take you, I’ve done a lot of modeling in onshape (after using Fusion360 for a few years). Parametric CAD systems (Fusion, onshape, solidworks, freeCAD) feel like a nice intersection of design and programming to me.

My current workflow is onshape for all modeling (because it has excellent multi-player concurrently editing support, relevant to FRC robotics), then Fusion for CAM¹ if it’s going to CNC equipment. Onshape added support for CAM in the last 8 months, but I haven’t switched yet.

¹ - Computer Aided Manufacturing-turn a shape into a series of instructions for the CNC equipment. Roughly:

CAM : CNC :: slicer : 3D printer

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