3d printing - which software?

[Pete.]

Sinc eI got my 3dprinter (Ender 3 pro) last year I've been ham-strung by my old 32bit PC running vista. It wouldn't run any of the modern software, but luckily would run Sketchup and Creality slicer so that allowed me to draw and print stuff although in a rather clunky manner.

Now I have just upgraded to a newer PC, a 64 bit i3 Dell running Windows 10. It's a modest machine but I'm sure it'll run any software I'll need for printing.

My question is, if you were me what software would you choose for drawing, slicing etc? Preferably I'd like to draw with free software but I'll pay a modest price if it's got good features. One thing I want to be able to do is print gear shapes (I'll stop short of actually calling them gears) so that's a consideration.

So, looking for yuor recommendations.

Pete.

[awemawson]

Fusion 360 for me

[Peter Cordell]

For me FreeCAD 0.18 you can download the free gear workbench
The yellow gears are printed with ABS the black ones are printed with PLA 

[tom osselton]

Oooh look a opened can of worms!

[Pete49]

I have a creality  3 v2 as well a generic printer and for drawing I use thingiverse etc. ( ) For slicing I use Cura 4. something (free) and have for several years without a problem and the latest version has better support options for parts with overhangs. It seems much better than most slicers including Creality slicers.

[Pete.]

I've downloaded Fusion 360 and started up the (steep) slope with tutorials. Need a better graphics card it seems

Also downloaded the latest creality slicer which is nothing at all like the one bundled with the Ender 3.
For one thing they have dropped support for .dae files which means that I have to stop drawing with Sketchup. Not such a bad thing as I now have no choice but to learn Fusion.

Creality slicer is based on cura, in fact the first thing it does is prompt you to upgrade tot he latest Cura.

[efrench]

I use Fusion 360 for design work and PrusaSlicer for the slicer.  I get better prints from PrusaSlicer than from Cura.

You can import your Sketchup files into Fusion 360.

[shipto]

I have to go with freecad too, It's a great program that is getting better all the time. I did dabble with fusion for a while but couldn't get the hang of it quite as well as freecad. For slicing I opt for cura which at times has let me down and I have had to go with other slicers but this was mostly with figures for my daughter.

[Pete.]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm going to stick with Fusion and cura for now, it seems to be a popular cobination and no-one has been negative about either. The creality slicer and Cura are almost identical, Creality being nothing more than Cura with less features as far as I can tell. At least with the proper Cura I can make simple models in Sketchup and save as .dae files, which the Creality slicer no longer supports.

[vtsteam]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm going to stick with Fusion and cura for now, it seems to be a popular cobination and no-one has been negative about either. The creality slicer and Cura are almost identical, Creality being nothing more than Cura with less features as far as I can tell. At least with the proper Cura I can make simple models in Sketchup and save as .dae files, which the Creality slicer no longer supports.

Pete, I've been reading this thread for a few days, don't know much about the programs listed or 3d printing, but did want to mention, that the old Google Sketchup (7 and 8)  (pre-Trimble) did have a .dxf plugin for exporting dxf files. I use that a lot. Don't know if that's of interest, and you sound like you're getting away from SKup. But it does make work with other CNC programs a lot easier. For CNC milling, btw I use the free Phlatboyz plugin (again for the old Google Sketchup).

Okay, butting out now...... 

[Brass_Machine]

I will be different here...

I run Alibre for my CAD design. Have been using it for over a decade. I have no complaints with it.

I use Cura for a slicer but I am not happy with it. Going to try pursa3D. Been playing with superslicer a bit.

Eric

[ddmckee54]

When I first started 3D printing several years ago I had a problem with the first printer I ordered, it NEVER arrived - long story.  Anyway, while I was waiting for my printer to arrive I started playing with slicing software.  I would download 3D models of anything and everything, slice them using both Cura and Slic3r, then run them on a 3D printer gcode simulation software that I found, I don't remember the name of it but if you Googled 3D printer gcode simulator you could probably still find it.

What I found was that Cura seemed a little easier to use, but would sometimes miss the support for overhangs or features that would be impossible to print without support, like a corner in mid-air.  Slic3r always seemed to be able to catch these features.  For several years I used Slicer, and the Prusa version of Slicer, but I hated the way that that they did the support making it very hard to remove.  When using Slic3r I would go to great lengths to AVOID using support, I would sometimes put in a diaphragm that was only 1 or 2 filaments wide in areas that needed support and then cut them out later.

After a while I wanted a little more control of the slicing software so I bit the bullet and bought Simlpify3D.  If you are printing features with thin walls, 1mm to 2mm, and you can't fit an even number of perimeters in that width Slic3r will leave a gap in the perimeter, and I wanted to fix that.  I wish I hadn't waited so long to purchase Simplify3D, it would go back and fill the gap, either with infill or a single filament depending on how you set it up.  Consequently print quality was much better.  Simplify3D will also allow you to manually insert or remove supports.  Plus it allows you to decide when using support whether it puts solid layers on top of the support or not.

To be fair, the new version of Slic3r does ALMOST everything that Simplify3D does, and it does it with free software.  However the manual placing or removing of supports Slic3r still does NOT allow, but that was about the only difference that I could find between the latest Slic3r and my Simplify3D.  I'm keeping the Simplify3D because I manually add supports a lot.  I still haven't figured out how to tweak the support settings to get it to do what I want it to automatically.

Don

[WeldingRod]

I run Simplify3d also.  The ability to adjust parameters by height is very useful for huge prints.
Sketchup is tricky to use for 3d printing; you have to patrol for inside/out triangles and added junk inside the model.

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[ddmckee54]

Weldingrod:

My prints are normally on the other end of the spectrum from huge.  There have been many times when Simplify3D has asked me if I didn't just try importing an Imperial drawing because it was so small, and did I want Simplify3D to convert it to millimeters.  That happened a lot when I was printing spacers for the rubber band guns.

I gotta admit, that's a  nice feature for them to include.

Don

[WeldingRod]

Oh, I get asked that all the time ;-)
I usually run Creo in inches...

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[RotarySMP]

I like Onshape for modelling, and Cura for slicing.