Hi all, Love the openbuilds community ... joined with the goal of learning cnc and eventually buying/building a pcb mill. First step in the journey is to get my hands on some 3d cad software. At this stage i'm down to fusion360 vs sketchup. both seem to reasonably equal in capability. Sooo ... my question is which one is most popular in the maker community and which one has best support in terms of libraries/parts ? any help is appreciated
If I am cutting a quick project out of a flat plate/board/foam, I use Sketchup because it is quick and easy with Sketchucam. If I am building a really complex part, I find Fusion 360 is easier. So, I use and like both...and I basically did not help you in deciding. Quick and dirty bushings my son and I made out out of a scrap of HDPE cutting board for his STEM class balloon car - not to brag, but his went the farthest. This took about 5 minutes to draw in Sketchup and get the g-code from the Sketchucam plug-in. This is a more complex multi part design for a dust shoe I did in Fusion 360. It seems more intuitive for larger more complex items, and there are great video tutorials. But, that is just my opinion.
Hi Craig I'm tending towards that same conclusion ... thanx for ur thoughts Took fusion360 for a test drive ... wow ... it certainly seems to be able to do anything michael
I use Solidworks for all my 3d modeling. (Not free or cheap lol) If I recall correctly Onshape which is simular to Solidworks is free but I think was a sharing type deal so anything you design is or can be open market. (Not a bad thing unless you are engineering your retirement) Paul
I just logged in to research this exact topic. I'd like to start playing around with Openbuilds designs and I see I can download Sketchup files of the linear actuators at the Openbuilds web site. I also see I can search for and open what looks like complete machine models in a Sketchup. Only I have all of my experience with Siemens NX and Catia and Solidworks and I am sure I can figure out Fusion 360 quickly. Is there any place I can download something like the C-Beam XL machine so I can start re-configuring the components rather than model everything from scratch?
Before I posted my question as a followup to the original poster's question I tried Sketchup and could not find a way to export the models into a format that i could open with Solidworks or Siemens NX. Typically in a *.STEP or *.IGES format. Not sure yet if Fusion 360 can open those file formats but I will check right now. So...I found how to open step files. One thing I found though is when I open a step file in Solidworks I can it builds an assembly with all of the components as separate models. I have only used Fusion 360 for about an hour total so I probably have some learning to do. So I see that there is a component list of the assembly....Fusion 360 sure is pretty sweet from what I'm finding. And I used to believe Siemens NX which started out as Unigraphics back in the 70's was the best CADCAM software on the planet...but I have seen its shortcomings over the years. Fusion 360 is pretty **** good for the new kid on the block.
