Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Creating a Design from Scratch
The quick example you have just completed using Blender offers just a tiny sliver of
the many possibilities for creating your own open source hardware. To learn more about
Blender and its capabilities, visit
www.blender.org/support/tutorials/
.
There you will find
video and text tutorials that will take you step by step through the Blender interface, intro-
ducing you to tools that will allow you to create your own designs.
As you continue to think of new things to design and 3D print, you may eventually
reach a point where you cannot find any existing designs to use for a project. Ideally, by
then you will have been using Blender or other beginner 3D design software to make de-
rivative works. That practice will help you when you need to start a project from scratch
or learn a new software package. However, do not fret if you have not been practicing re-
working existing designs.
Free and Open Source 3D CAD Software
In general, I would rather mention only free and open source software (FOSS). However,
free and open source CAD software is lacking for users who have little or no computer
graphics software at their disposal. A few promising early-development software packages
are available. Those packages are not quite feature-full enough to do some of the tasks a
beginner would need, but are worth mentioning.
In the near future, a number of FOSS packages will offer new advanced features and
will be able to serve as the go-to 3D CAD software for beginners. For now, I will mention
a number of non-free source software. Any non-free source software will be noted as such
in the following list of software.
If you are in the early stages of learning CAD and 3D modeling, there are a few soft-
ware packages aimed at learning the basics:
Tinkercad
(Non-Free). No doubt, Tinkercad is the easiest and most well-docu-
mented software for beginners. Tinkercad is aimed at younger users and adults
with little to no computer graphics experience. The software is also web based and
requires no software install.
One large negative: Tinkercad is a closed source cloud service. There was already one
scare about the website closing and all users losing their designs. Tinkercad has since
been purchased by a larger company, but I would advise using it only as an early learning
tool before moving on to more advanced software.
Sketchup Make
(Non-Free). Despite having been a Google product for only a
short time, Sketchup has a wide base of users. The user interface is easy to use for
beginners, and a number of tutorials are available to help you get started. Sketchup
