CAD

[Anonymous No.1522787]

Can anyone recommend a good CAD program that is either free or doesn't cost the earth? I'm working on a custom watch design as a personal project and I need a program I can use to send either regular cad files or generated technical drawings to a cnc company.

>Painstakingly mock up some files in FreeCAD
>Program is a bug filled pile of ass that crashes and glitches out every 5 minutes
>Send the obscure file type over to machinist
>"Can't open it"
>Decent software is $X,000 per year

Wat do

[Anonymous No.1522792]

What are you using at the moment?

Also why have you not tried Onshape or Fusion 360?

[Anonymous No.1522799]

>>1522792
>Fusion 360
/thread

[Anonymous No.1522858]

>>1522792

Sorry for the late reply, didn't have notifications on... I've never looked at Fusion 360, it just never came up in my searches.

[Anonymous No.1522879]

>>1522787
Simple for prints can be designed on discontinued
123D design, but it is too simple many times.

[Anonymous No.1522886]

>>1522858
Just sign up as a hobbyist and you can get Fusion 360 free

[Anonymous No.1522933]

>Fusion 360
Botnet
Not really free when you are the product

[Anonymous No.1522942]

>>1522787
Aren't the activation codes of SolidWorks all over the place?

[Anonymous No.1522945]

>>1522787
Personally I use OpenSCAD, but I'm aware that its particular brand of autism may not mesh with yours.

[Anonymous No.1522953]

>>1522933
How's life off the grid in your 10x13 pallet shack? Wifi any good?

[Anonymous No.1522954]

>>1522787
FreeCAD

[Anonymous No.1522956]

>>1522953
>Only luddites care about google behavioralists creating psychological profiles to manipulate the masses
Suprised you didn't use the "only criminals care about privacy" angle. Not working anymore, and ad-hom is a fall back position?

[Anonymous No.1522995]

whats wrong with sketchup? it's not owned by google anymore

[Anonymous No.1523572]

Is DraftSight no good?

[Anonymous No.1523574]

>>1522933
>Not really free when you are the product

But Its not free

[Anonymous No.1523583]

>>1522953
>he thinks hat in order to use technology he has to be spied on continuously by agencies and companies with no oversight.
Get over yourself. Your data is worth a lot more than you seem to think.

[Anonymous No.1523585]

>>1522995
I've been living under a rock the past year pertaining to anything hobby. Did they ever release the linux port they were talking about?

[Anonymous No.1523791]

I use auto desk inventor, you can just bull shit a school and then get a student copy for free

[Anonymous No.1523797]

>>1522787
Why haven't you just pirated CAD?

[Anonymous No.1523800]

>>1522954
I use this, and it works ok. Haven't used much else. OpenSCAD is awesome, but only good for programmatic things. There's a lot of existing projects in OpenSCAD you can utilize.

[Anonymous No.1523983]

>>1523585
it's browser based now

[Anonymous No.1523984]

>>1522787
Solidworks, there are also tons of Lynda guides and books out there to get you used to all the sketch tools and features. I just got my solidworks certification, hard test but worth it and you can put it on your resume.

[Anonymous No.1524168]

>>1522933
Its not free at all. Afaik from reading the license agreement their cloud storage security is real too.

[Anonymous No.1524174]

>>1522787
Why the hell didn't you hire me instead? I'm dumb enough to hold your hand for hours to make a quick buck.

[Anonymous No.1525311]

>>1522792

Onshape is GOAT. I used solidworks extensively before, but Onshape is honest to God light-years better than everything else now. Except it's drawings. Drawings are just fine.

Fusion's great for hobby stuff, and the built in CAM is a treat, but I never liked the single modelling environment.

[Anonymous No.1525362]

Im in the same boat,
>noob
>crash course'in this

and i cannot seem to find forums or w/e for newbs like me.

>the "free software im having a hard time finding usable software

[Anonymous No.1525367]

>>1525362
>>1522787
Try Fusion 360. It is free for students,hobby and start-ups. And even if you buy it, it costs only $500/year.

Watch Lars Christensen videos to start: https://www.youtube.com/user/cadcamstuff/videos

After you get to know a software a bit better you can watch basically any video for any CAD software and you can learn some things. For making basic stuff they are all basically the same. They might have some functions Fusion360 doesn't have, But that is where you find if you have any ingenuity in you.

>and i cannot seem to find forums
You are on one.

[Anonymous No.1526144]

>>1522787
freecad is pretty awesome.

[Anonymous No.1526153]

>>1522787
eMachineShop - it's free and no premium bullshit

[Anonymous No.1528246]

Download the inventor or SOLIDWORKS students edition from the official websites. I use both for work. Have the student editions at home, just pose as student. SOLIDWORKS is marked leader. They have excellent tutorials too. Students edition only give students watermark.

[Anonymous No.1528261]

>>1528246
How does it compare to Catia?

[Anonymous No.1528313]

2D or 3D?
Draftsight used to be good and free, perfectly fine for 2D
AutoCAD and Inventor can be used on student licence
Personally I teach people to use CAD sometimes but fell out of loop when it comes to software

[Anonymous No.1529080]

Just do what I do and use the solid works key that my local high school gives out for free

[Anonymous No.1529089]

>>1529080
What if his high school, like mine, is too poor to offer such things?

[Anonymous No.1529097]

>>1522787
Freewarefags BTFO
>>1522953
Botnet or not Fusion360 is shit anyway, hard to use.
>>1523984
Dumb question but it works in bootcamp right?

[Anonymous No.1529102]

>>1523984
>I just got my solidworks certification
Which level? Anything that's not CSWP and above doesn't count as SW certification, it's piss easy.

[Anonymous No.1529113]

>>1528261
They're the same thing essentially

>>1529097
>Botnet or not Fusion360 is shit anyway, hard to use.
What? It doesn't do stuff like plastic injection simulation but for modelling it's very easy and intuitive.

[Anonymous No.1529151]

>>1529089
Find one that isn't

[Anonymous No.1529156]

Pirate solid works from solid squad, done.

[Anonymous No.1529233]

>>1529151
And they will just give me their education keys even though I'm not enrolled there?

[Anonymous No.1531768]

>>1529233
Any cool student will. They got theirs by having a .edu email addy.

What I did besides that (while helping my machinistbro compare CAD programs) is torrent a variety then run them in virtual machines. VMs are wonderful for testing cracked software because you can revert to a clean snapshot or save successful installs to a particular snapshot then boot what you like.

The first thing most people used to do with their new PC is learn to pirate software. I haven't paid for soft since PartitionMagic 4.0 was released. Get good then make a pig of yourself and IGNORE memes because they are bullshit.

[Anonymous No.1531778]

>>1529097
>Freewarefags BTFO
Indeed.
Btw, not freewarefags, but freetards.

[Anonymous No.1532285]

>>1522787
FreeCAD, convert your files to STEP.

[Anonymous No.1532442]

>>1522787
Definitely FreeCAD

[Anonymous No.1532646]

>>1531768
Gotcha, thanks anon

[Anonymous No.1533173]

Anyone here know how to sub-program on FAGOR controllers while drip-feeding from a laptop? Post processor doesn't seem to be doing it wrong but it throws me an error.

Oh, and fuck these retarded fagor controllers. Garbage vomit shit cunt nigger controllers, worth less than their weight in scrap.

[Anonymous No.1533918]

>>1522787

slow down there chief.

You have freeCAD project files? Why can't you export them to STL? STL is the industry standard right?

[Anonymous No.1533921]

>>1522787
openscad

[Anonymous No.1534193]

>>1533918
This. FreeCAD is quite nice already if you use a newer versions and i'm really looking forward to new updates as it gets better every time. Especially enjoy the scripting system. Every software should have that.

If there was a linux version of Fusion360 i'd probably use that. I'm not really sure about the cloud stuff i generally don't like that and it seems very unecessary.

The FreeCAD file format is just for use with FreeCAD. You can export to pretty much every file format you'd like. You can even choose from a list of different navigation styles so you don't have to relearn stuff you're already used to.

[Anonymous No.1534496]

>>1533918
>STL
STL IS NOT THE INDUSTRY STANDARD! Avoid STL if at all possible! STL is a horrible god-awful file format that we absolutely should not be using anymore. STL does keep track of units, so you have to remember them somewhere. STL is triangulated, which 1) is impossible to edit with CAD software 2) is an inefficient way to describe geometry 3) does not describe curved surfaces well. Pic related notice all those flat edges? Some people forget that STL is triangulated and after they print their parts, sand off all those flat faces. The printer didn't have to make the faces flat. It could have made them round if it wasn't for STL. This is particularly problematic on high resolution 3d printers and very bad if for some reason you decide to use an STL file for CNC machining. Don't use STL, use STEP. STEP is the industry standard. You can translate STEP between different CAD software or to machining software because it actually preserves all the geometric information. It's not based on horrible triangles either.

>>1522945
>>1523800
>>1533921
>OpenSCAD
Is garbage. It literally uses an obsolete approach to CAD from the 70s. 90% of the use cases for OpenSCAD do not make any sense and are much better served with a parametric modeller like FreeCAD.

[Anonymous No.1534498]

>>1534496
forgot pic

[Anonymous No.1534605]

>>1534496
>STL
It's hilarious in a lot of situations to watch that format shit the bed. I have a part model with a lot of curve geometry, I wanted to turn it into STL so it could be printed. I accidentally put an extra decimal place to the conversion tolerance.

My OC'd 7700k pinned for 4 minutes straight, finally spitting out the file; 587 megabytes of TRIANGLES. Boy was it smooooth.

[Anonymous No.1534609]

>>1522787
Why not just pirate enterprise CAD software? Depending on the software it can sometimes be a bit of a pain to install but once it's done it's done.

[Anonymous No.1534627]

>>1534496
>when some baka gajin delivers you a "high resolution" 3D scan in .stl
>tfw Solidworks absolutely shits the bed
>tfw it's corrupted and needs to be fixed
>tfw computer ignites

[Anonymous No.1535145]

>>1534609
5yrs ago yes but if you you use windows just go with fusion360 legally. If you use linux go with Freecad or be fucked like most of the linux users. So sad there's no really good CADCAM solution for linux because "it's not worth it" even if a lot of the Fusion360 guys only use windows for CAM and the rest is linux based.

[Anonymous No.1535148]

>>1534496
>I'm afraid of typing
based and clickpilled

[Anonymous No.1535257]

>>1535148
typing? Oh god no, there are things you literally cannot do in openscad, that you can do in FreeCAD. For example openscad does not solve for constraints like FreeCAD can. Nor can openscad model splines. OpenSCAD just doesn't have the capabilities of a modern CAD tool.
>>1534605
Same here. Once I put an STL file in the machine build setup and there was nothing there. I did this several times before I figured out that the machine treated the part was kilometers long rather centimeters, so the part filled up the whole build platform which is why I saw nothing.

[Anonymous No.1536125]

>>1522787
Solidworks. Yes I know its hella expensive but its the industry standard and so easy to learn. You can get it on CGPeers and just pirate it from there.

[Anonymous No.1536367]

>>1523791
Criminally underrated post

[Anonymous No.1537408]

sick to death of freecad. all too often there's no way to directly do the really simple edit you want, and sometimes it's impossible altogether. also it loves to crash when changing workbenches

[Anonymous No.1537423]

>>1534496
But 3D design and printing software seems to be geared around STL? My CAD software actually exports in VRML.

[Anonymous No.1537424]

>>1535145
What if you re on macOS?

[Anonymous No.1537590]

>>1537423
>>3d design
not CAD software.
>>printing
They're fucking wrong and we should stop using STL for 3d printing.
>>VRML
is a somewhat decent format.

[Anonymous No.1537613]

>>1537424
Runs on mac just fine.

[Anonymous No.1537773]

>>1536125
I'm a scrub. What's cgpeers. I just Googled it. Is it easy to use?

[Anonymous No.1538145]

>>1522787
>>1522792
Fusion 360
I am pretty sure there is a way to get it and use it free, I met a guy who built an old CNC machine in his garage, He built parts in Fusion 360, and he used Mach 3 to create tool paths and drive the CNC bed mill that he had
it was simlar to a tormach or a Fadal VMC 15, but it was some no name brand he got cheap and upgraded all the internals and motors, he ran off a VFD, it was real slick, I watched him mill and tap a plate for a CNC plasma table he was building with a friend, I was just there to buy something he had for sale, but I got to chat with him for a few hours while he explained everything to me, it was friggin awesome
I knew about fusion 360 but I thought it was $$$, he said you could use it free if you were not a company
so "free for personal use" basically
I have not downloaded it yet, not ready for it still making simple wood projects in Sketchup like a pleb

[Anonymous No.1538181]

Rate my CAD software.

[Anonymous No.1538611]

Any opinions on the Vectric offering? VCarve, Aspire?

[Anonymous No.1538691]

>>1534496
Partially true, STL is triangulated, but you should never just File > Save as > STL, you should export it, where you have control over the details.
And it is standard format for stereolythography, which is used for rapid prototyping. True, you can send other formats to the most 3D printers, but then they will internallyconvert it to STL, as it required for the slicing, but fixme.
>>1534605
Also true, tessalation with high LOD can burn your CPU, thus you want to use a reasonable LOD. Some CAD program can preview you the results, before it gets exported.
In CATIA, with the STL prototyping workbench (extra license required) you can first tessalate the geometry which will be added to the specification tree as an extra node, and you can preview it, then if it looks good you can export it as STL.
If you just mindlessly save something to STL you shouldnt be surprised if it comes out as shit. You should know your tools to be capable efficiently using it.

Fucking CAD KeyUser here.

[Anonymous No.1538713]

>>1538691
>> standard format for stereolythography
yeah and now some stereolithography machines now have good enough resolution that you have to use a format other than STL.
>>as it required for the slicing
you don't need STL for slicing. You don't even need to internally convert to STL to slice, you can directly slice the CAD geometry. Most CAD kernals even have a function that makes a slice of a cad model through a plane. But that's too hard for most people who write 3d printer software. Plus CAD kernals tend to be expensive and then there's opencascade, but it's shit.

[Anonymous No.1538723]

Okay fgt, I'll teach you how to get CAD free/cheap.

1. Find a shitty community college near you and apply online
2. When they instantly approve you for not being mentally retarded, they will give you a .edu email address.
3. Register for some classes if you want to stop being a failure, otherwise proceed next step.
4. Use that .edu email to sign up for accounts with various CAD companies. I know the following have free student access:

>Catia
>Creo
>Siemens NX
>Fusion 360

[Anonymous No.1538727]

>>1538723
I just SSQ them.

[Anonymous No.1538730]

I'm psyched I finished designing my steam engine

[Anonymous No.1538731]

>>1538730
It's just a basic 2 cylinder design

[Anonymous No.1538732]

>>1538731
I think it will be sexy on my desk.

[Anonymous No.1538733]

>>1538732
Making good progress on machining it too. Tomorrow I'm going to make the valve cylinder

[Anonymous No.1538790]

Bros I’m starting as an apprentice CNC machinist in a couple months and I’m going in pretty much brand new to it. They’ve informed me that I’ll be taught from the ground up.

So could any bros inform me on exactly what kind of math, tools and other things I’ll be encountering on a daily basis?

[Anonymous No.1538792]

>>1538790
>math
kindergarten shit, up to some basic trig.
>tools
learn how controllers work, learn g code, learn what work offsets are, what tool offsets are, learn feeds and speeds for common materials, learn what DOC/WOC and radial chip thinning, learn to use measuring tools properly, and learn how the fuck to clean collets and tapers

this should covers most of the basics, try to get some CADCAM practice somehow

[Anonymous No.1538796]

>>1538792
What kind of basic trig are we talking?

I’m assuming we’re going to use cheat sheets, calculator and charts for the most part?

[Anonymous No.1538797]

>>1538796
Pretty much. I've used trig like a dozen times in five+ years, it's so uncommon I practically have to relearn it. Basically, say you run a dial indicator over a surface and you get 0.013" over 6". What angle is that?

99% of the time it's charts and calculator. Imperial shit is math friendly if your calculator is across the shop and you're too lazy to get it, just remember a few fractions and you can work out all sorts of shit in your head with ease.

[Anonymous No.1538803]

>>1538797
Thanks a bunch for this info anon, this helps a lot

[Anonymous No.1538956]

>>1538731
That's a single cylinder but nice. post a video when it's working.

[Anonymous No.1538983]

>>1538956
No, double cylinder steam engines utilize 2 cylinders. One for valving and a second for actual power. The more common term is "piston valve steam engine" but I've been using some pretty ancient reference material so my terminology is a bit dated.

[Anonymous No.1539012]

>>1522787
>not reporting bugs in the free software you use
Do your part.

[Anonymous No.1541058]

>>1538733
Where did your w key go?

[Anonymous No.1541087]

>>1538181
Unusable/10, but I bet some firm or another uses it because buying it seemed like a good idea in 2006

[Anonymous No.1541092]

>>1534496
>1) is impossible to edit with CAD software
Remind me again what it is for? Pic related are prints from STL files

>>1534498
That thing is probably made in Blender

[Anonymous No.1541129]

>>1541092
>>Remind me again what it is for?
So lets say you want to make the part in >>1534498, but you want it to have a different diameter and thickness. Have fun resizing a bunch of fucking triangles. STEP is what you're supposed to use for interoperation between different CAD software. We should use a file format such as STEP rather than STL for 3d printing CAD models so that we don't lose information during conversion.
>>prints from STL files
that's cool I guess, call me back when you're making multiple parts that have to fit together

[Anonymous No.1541277]

>>1522942
it is crap, it has no add ons so you cannot use fastners.

[Anonymous No.1541279]

>>1531778
>freetards
>have cad use by the pentagon to build Abrams

yes totally btfo

[Anonymous No.1541348]

>>1538796
below is spot on
>>1538797
The odd time I need some trig I just look in Machinery's Handbook and find what I need to do. Most of the time I just sketch whatever in CAD and come up with the missing dimension.

[Anonymous No.1541405]

I managed to get autodesk inventor for free by pretending to be a highschool student. Maybe try that?

[Anonymous No.1541421]

>>1541405
Best option

[Anonymous No.1541428]

>>1541421
Mhm

[Anonymous No.1541441]

Go for onshape definitely. Im in love with that software

[Anonymous No.1542295]

>>1541277

make your own fasteners. super easy with design tables

[Anonymous No.1542373]

Hey /diy/, thanks for this thread, I've been dying to sink my teeth back into CAD after winning a state competition back in HS, taking the occasional course throughout college. I'm an engineering grad, working now, but I didn't want to lose my knowledge with CAD software despite its irrelevance in my field now. So for my first "getting acquainted" with Fusion 360 project, I'm going to 3D model the home I've just purchased. Any tips or approach suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.

[Anonymous No.1542510]

>>1529113
Solidworks is cheaper, more user friendly and have less powerful simulation tools for aerospace engineering and such.

[Anonymous No.1542581]

>>1542373
"Component" everything. For example, make every object a component. If you'd like to put tv on a wall, make it a new component. That way you'll have history you can actually support instead of a mess that takes time even to scroll. Split your scene on subprojects, e.g. model one room first, then second, and then assemble rooms together with external references (forgot how they're called).

[Anonymous No.1542638]

I'll ask here.

I want to get into CAD. Problem is that I don't know where to start.
At this point I can use OpenSCAD, since it is very intuitive, but when it comes to moving parts, it is garbage.
Is FreeCAD any good?

[Anonymous No.1542642]

>Fusion 360

I'm afraid Autodesk will pull the rug out under me when there's enough user uptake like they did with EAGLE.

[Anonymous No.1542654]

>>1541058
I have three damaged scissors/clips on my keyboard, figured I need W more than the numpad -. I use a separate keyboard most of the time so its not too bad.

In other news, I finished machining my valve cylinder earlier. CAD is awesome for layout.

[Anonymous No.1543458]

>>1522787
Fusion 360 or Inventor

[Anonymous No.1543502]

>>1542642
That's what a guy said to me.

[Anonymous No.1543972]

>>1542654
Those are a few pennies on the lenovo website, man. But whatever rocks your boat. Don't be so rough with your electronics.

[Anonymous No.1544498]

>>1542638
FreeCAD is much better than OpenSCAD. OpenSCAD is obsolete and you can do everything it can do and more in FreeCAD. Even the programmatic shit can be done with python macros in FreeCAD. FreeCAD is also a parametric modeller, so it's a modern CAD tool that has basically all features of other proprietary CAD tools. If you can learn FreeCAD you can learn other CAD tools.

The following is just me bitching about FreeCAD. FreeCAD is the best FOSS CAD software out there, so you can ignore the following. There are some very big problems under the hood though, namely the lack of topological naming. This means if you change something early in the chain, this can fuck up everything. There are ways to fix this, just remember to reassign sketches to faces. The OpenCascade CAD kernel is also somewhat buggy. One big problem, I'm not sure if it's related to topological naming or what is that FreeCAD doesn't necessarily merge coincident faces into solids, which can create problems when you attempt to do further operations on them like extrude and cut. So say you extrude midplane through these two faces at once, bad shit happens. It will take some time to fix all these problems. CAD kernels are intense shit. Even the company that makes solidworks buys a CAD kernel from another company. That and workbenches are confusing as hell. FreeCAD really needs one unified workbench so that the features you need aren't distributed across many different workbenches.

[Anonymous No.1544514]

>>1541087
>when you buy a software and are stuck with it for eternity because your company can't afford new licences and training

[Anonymous No.1544518]

>>1544498
>installed FreeCAD on my Mac
>it kept zooming every time I touched the mouse
Into the trash

[Anonymous No.1544536]

$40/year for an EAA membership gets you a Solidworks student license, student or not.

If you're into airplanes n' shit, there's lots of other discounts with that membership.
Only reason I have it is for the solidworks license.

[Anonymous No.1544540]

>>1544518
>my Mac
Into the trash

[Anonymous No.1544574]

>>1544540
t. poor

[Anonymous No.1544589]

>>1544518
>>mac
well there's your problem.
"Unfortunately, none of the developers owns a Mac, neither do the other regular contributors. We need your help to determine which mouse buttons and key combination work so we can update this wiki. "
https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Mouse_Model
Here have a buttplug for your trouble.

[Anonymous No.1544591]

>>1544589
oh wait, meant to say that I actually posted a rook.

[Anonymous No.1546854]

>>1522953
Your personal data amounts to all of the money you will ever spend in your lifetime. Naw nobody would ever want that would they?

[Anonymous No.1546987]

Question:
Is there any cheap tool that can do static/dynamic analysis for wood?
Fusion 360 apparently doesn't analyze orthotropic materials.

[Anonymous No.1547006]

>>1546987
Just do it on paper. Especially statics, c'mon that's easy.
>>1544589
Okay that explains a lot
>>1544591
I can still fit it up my ass don't worry.

[Anonymous No.1547010]

>>1547006
Doing statics in 3d is tedious and you can't iterate designs quickly.
You can't really do frequency analysis without finite element tools anyway.
I'm just curious if there's a tool for under $150/month that I could pitch to my boss.

[Anonymous No.1547019]

>>1522787

[Anonymous No.1547237]

>>1542654
sweet

[Anonymous No.1547653]

>>1547010
FreeCAD has a FEM workbench. Right now you can use calculix, elmer and z88 with it. There's a lot of good stuff out there. I like fenics but i guess it's overkill for static analysis. There's Deal II, freefem and Salome. Don't let the zero price tag disturb you. These programs are very powerful and comparable to expensive pro Software. Code aster from salome is used for nuclear reactor safety calculations and it's 0$

[Anonymous No.1547915]

How do I stop Fusion360 from making a shortcut to itself on the desktop every time it updates (so every five fucking minutes)?

[Anonymous No.1548626]

XCAD 2000. You will need an Amiga though.

[Anonymous No.1548702]

Guys, I'm currently using sketchup for general modeling at work. But I'm needing something to 3d model moving parts with multiple pivot points. What software should I be looking at?

Also, needing something that I can use to trace and edit images. We have a waterjet and I'm trying to expand our offerings to the general public (we are primarily a machine and fabrication shop for the marine industry).

If i need 2 seperate programs that's fine. Just looking to speed up my design and cutting times.

Thanks for any help. Picture for attention, it's our 1 million ton press.

[Anonymous No.1548826]

At work i use Mastercam and AutoCAD and we are number one in the world at submersive valve

[Anonymous No.1550664]

>>1522787
I would think sketchup, or am I missing some point?

[Anonymous No.1550692]

>>1534496
I've yet to see a slicer that doesn't use polygons to approximate the layers of a model. And I rather have the CAD program interpolate the curves than the slicer.
And do common 3d printers even implement the arc G commands?

What's wrong with using a triangle mesh when the resulting G-Code only uses linear motion anyway?

[Anonymous No.1550700]

>>1550692
maybe cause you've never used professional 3d printers.

[Anonymous No.1550711]

>>1550700
The problem isn't the printer. It's the slicer.
Every slicer I've seen internally converts the model to a triangle mesh and then uses the same basic algorithm for slicing triangle meshes.

I've been experimenting with making my own slicer.
If you know an interesting slicing algorithm that does something different then please share it.

[Anonymous No.1550831]

>>1522954
This.

[Anonymous No.1551204]

>>1550711
FreeCAD can do crosssections from solids. I think they are BSpline objects.

[Anonymous No.1551232]

>>1551204
Many CAD programs can do operations like that on NURBS surfaces.

But it's actually a pretty complex problem with lots of annoying border cases.
AFAIK most CAD software just ends up using triangular tessellation, so the result loses the actual curves.

[Anonymous No.1551259]

>>1547915
buy a mac

[Anonymous No.1551260]

>>1547010
if it's lots of repetitive calculations you can use a spreadsheet. The cells are great for summing up lots of little elements. But if you need it for work you probably don't want to cheap out on this so look for simulation software yeah.

[Anonymous No.1551510]

>>1522942
Yes

[Anonymous No.1551738]

>>1551232
>>1550711
direct NURBS slicing of STEP MASTER RACE!
http://edge.rit.edu/edge/P10551/public/SFF/SFF%202003%20Proceedings/2003%20SFF%20Papers/15-Starly.pdf
fucking OpenSCAD trash slicing:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/383f/cf90265c7346016922f5bea2199d405dc3a5.pdf
>>triangular tessellation
eat shit CS scum, NURBS FOREVER! Fugging computer scientists who think triangle meshes are the only thing in computational geometry. Check out implicit geometry CS trash. If you aren't actually CS, you're forgiven, CS people actually believe that everything is triangles.

[Anonymous No.1552175]

>>1551738
>direct NURBS slicing of STEP MASTER RACE!
>http://edge.rit.edu/edge/P10551/public/SFF/SFF%202003%20Proceedings/2003%20SFF%20Papers/15-Starly.pdf
That uses ray-tracing for the slicing. You don't get the actual curves of a slice either.

[Anonymous No.1552186]

>>1523791
This. Also can do this with Fusion 360 just register as a "student"

[Anonymous No.1552375]

>>1552175
that's not using triangles though.

[Anonymous No.1552390]

>>1552375
Not everything that leads to linear motions is triangles.

Who am I kidding - everything is triangles.
Wake up sheeple.