[ruffrecords]

It's the standard Autocad interface. It appeals more to people who had formal drafting tuition.
 There is a possibility to work in polar; you need to check the help. Me, I don't use them. I'd rather draw a horizontal line and rotate it by a specified angle.
 Either copy or offset. Copy will move according to whatever  you want, offset will copy at a specified perpendicular distance.

I guess it is all down to the user interface. I am not a trained draftsman although I took drawing classes as part of my apprenticeship back in the late 60s (before CAD was even thought of).

I use QCAD and I love its interface. You click on the line tool and a new toolbox appears with selections for vertical, horizontal, angled, parallel and other types of lines. Pick your line type, fill in the length  and/or angle and/or spacing as required and away you go. It even remembers these parameters next time you select that tool. I cannot envisage drawing a point to point line, then setting its angle and then its length as separate operations just to draw a vertical line.

Cheers

Ian

[abbey road d enfer]

I cannot envisage drawing a point to point line, then setting its angle and then its length as separate operations just to draw a vertical line.

It is not as convoluted as you  describe. If I want to draw a vertical or horizontal line, there is a setting that forces orthogonal moves only (F8).
Most of the times, a point-to-point line will be drawn by typing the origin and end coordinates.
I have used Qcad for some time, until it miserably crashed on me.
There are basically two families of drafting interfaces, the cartesian (Autocad) and the descriptive (Solidworks, Sketchup). The latter seem to be the most favoured by people who are not formally trained to drafting.
Some of them are unusable for me (Sketchup). Each one his own, I guess.
The interface in Design Spark Mechanical is some kind of in-between that's perfect for 3D printing and machining, but would not be accurate enough for precision work IMO.

[abbey road d enfer]

One last defence of Fusion360.

You can export DXF's wtihout issue.
You can export STL's without issue
You can export OBJ's without issue.

The biggest danger with them is losing access to the tool itself, not your content.
For most of the things we do (basic geometric shapes, extrusions and boolean math) most other tools could be picked up pretty quickly.

/R

I liked Fusion 360, and was determined to really dig in, until it suddenly became off limits.
It was not wasted time, since it allowed me to acquire some comprehension of the thought process that seems to be common to many 3D softwares..

[chilidawg]

I don't have one but I have been toying with the idea for some time. Two things are putting me off:

1. Finding enough things to make with it to make it worth while.
2. Going up the learning curve of 3D CAD. I find their user interfaces horribly counter intuitive

Chweers

ian

I've been using Solidworks 3D lately to design my 3D printed enclosures (and basically any plastic parts)

[ruffrecords]

It is not as convoluted as you  describe. If I want to draw a vertical or horizontal line, there is a setting that forces orthogonal moves only (F8).
Most of the times, a point-to-point line will be drawn by typing the origin and end coordinates.
I have used Qcad for some time, until it miserably crashed on me.
There are basically two families of drafting interfaces, the cartesian (Autocad) and the descriptive (Solidworks, Sketchup). The latter seem to be the most favoured by people who are not formally trained to drafting.
Some of them are unusable for me (Sketchup). Each one his own, I guess.
The interface in Design Spark Mechanical is some kind of in-between that's perfect for 3D printing and machining, but would not be accurate enough for precision work IMO.

I agree it is definitely a personal thing. Like you I cannot get on with Sketchup at all. When I was still working (last millennium) I remember our mechanical designers mostly inputting at the command line despite everything else being point and click. I am sure some of them could have sat with a text editor and written the dxf file directly (which is how I used to write in assembler at the time).

Cheers

Ian

[Rochey]

I would be very happy to do a live zoom on basic enclosure design for groupdiy folks using fusion360. If that's of any interest. Might be a nice chance to have a beer with friends too.

Any interest?

[abbey road d enfer]

Another use for a 3D printer.
These things cost about $3 from usual vendors.

[JohnRoberts]

Years ago I taught myself turbocad mainly because it was cheap. I used it to design my plastic injection molded tuner package. Working with an IM vendor in TX we sent my 3d cad file to China to have the tooling machined. This cost me thousands of dollars less than tooling it domestically.

I have nothing good to say about the 3d software other than it was relatively cheap and adequate for the task at hand.

I really like the precision of modern CAD, back in the day it would take multiple prototypes to get a mechanical design right. This was one and done, but I modeled up all the components to confirm they fit together in the computer.

 They used to call 3d printed proof versions SLA (?) and we had a test set printed up. All good.

JR 

[Rochey]

ABBEY - THAT LOOKS AWESOME! I'm going to design some up myself this afternoon!

John - The SLA is used these days to reference 3d printed resin, where the resin is UV cured in layers. SLA/Resin printers are cheap these days, as they mainly use a LCD screen with a UV lamp, and a single stepper motor that moves a plate up from the screen. (sorry, bad description).

I mostly use my Resin printer for printing small external components, such as knobs, bezels, things that people see, as it's resolution is 10x what my FDM (extruded plastic) printer can do.

For internal components - PCB holders etc, it's hard not to beat FDM printing. Cheap, pretty quick (faster than postage!) and providing the environment isn't harsh (e.g. hot, pressure etc) it's perfectly strong enough.

[dirtyhanfri]

I would be very happy to do a live zoom on basic enclosure design for groupdiy folks using fusion360. If that's of any interest. Might be a nice chance to have a beer with friends too.

Any interest?

Interested, of course.

I've been using fusion 360 for mechanical design and design of multiple 3d printed parts. I'm somewhat used to It but it's always good to learn from somebody more experienced.

[abbey road d enfer]

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