As a Christmas gift to myself, I bought an Anycubic Kobra 2. I’ve never owned a 3D printer and have been enamored of the tech for a while. With a holiday sale from Anycubic, I bought into the hobby for under $300.
While I’m still heavily in the “print shit you find on Thingiverse” phase, I also know that it can somewhat easy to make things that make their way onto a heated platen. Many, many years ago, I was very good with 3D CAD software. I spent a summer digitized hand-drawn plans from a regional architect, designed corrugated boxes in industry-specific software, and worked for a company that made add-ons for SolidWorks.
Which brings me to current state and, ho-ly crap has 3D modeling software gotten amazing. AutoCAD and SolidWorks are obviously still around but unattainable to general consumers. There’s OpenSCAD for programmers who refuse to learn CAD software. And SketchUp which is a solid, free, consumer-grade piece of modeling software.
But the real *chef kiss* in the consumer market is Fusion360 and it is damn impressive to An Old who cut his teeth on older AutoDesk software. It’s also and very opinionated way to model; AutoDesk has always had an iron grip on people’s workflows and 360 is no different.
Which, to bring it back to local concerns, means I don’t “know CAD” anymore. I understand conceptually how CAD software works, and I can still model three-dimensionally in my head, but converted concepts to digital items I can stick on a SD card is, well, hard.
This isn’t a complaint; having to catch up on (hrm) 30 years of technology improvements is going to be hard. I’m just amazed at the progress in this space that is free to consumers and I hope 3D printing continues to push the boundaries in this space.
Sidenote: I assume 3D printer manufacturers are not collaborating a lot, but there’s a market for moderately-featured consumer CAD software in the sub-$100 annual costs. I assume (with zero research) that the profit in 3D printer economies is in filament and replacement parts. I would hope removing cost-based friction to let non-engineers design and print objects leads to experimentation and more filament sales.