
Ask HN: 3D Modeling Tools for Woodworking/Furniture? - mc32
I have the idea of making some simple furniture with some of the extra time as something semi productive to do.<p>Are there decent to use OSS tools?  I see some SkethcUp and others recommended.<p>It doesn&#x27;t need to render things realistically but would be nice if it can tell you that some pocket holes are going to run into each other, for example.
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bradknowles
For that, I think you would want a 3d solid modeling program. The best known
program in that space that I know of is SolidWorks. We were looking at using
it for a local company run by a friend that was doing one-off conversion of
vehicles from internal combustion engines to full battery electric, but it was
damn bloody expensive. You could get a student version, if you could prove you
were a student, but the models it allowed you to make were simple, and were
intentionally incompatible with the models made by the professional version.

I’m sure there are others in this space, but I don’t know of any names off the
top of my head.

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heisenzombie
One option you could try in this vein is OnShape, it’s “cloud” CAD written by
some ex-Solidworks engineers. It’s free (gratis) unless you want to make your
models private, and is quite surprisingly good. I would personally always pick
it over Sketchup because I much prefer parametric solid modelling.

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auxym
Second OnShape. Autodesk Fusion370 also has free license for hobbyists and
even startups with low revenue.

In the OSS world, I believe the best contender in that space is FreeCAD. I've
yet to try it myself.

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mrfusion
How do these compare to openscad?

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Dork1234
If you are doing this for fun just I would try a bunch of different software.

In the OSS range:

FreeCAD, Blender, OpenSCAD are some helpful OSS. Even though none of those are
ideal for Woodworking you could learn a lot from just using them.

Some free as in beer (or free trial) software would be:

TinkerCAD, Fusion360, SketchUp, Carveco, and Rhino.

It is pretty normal for Professional users to use a bunch of different
software packages to use the best parts of all them.

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brudgers
Scrap wood is probably a more straightforward approach. It will give
experience with woodworking instead of 3D modeling. Scrap wood will let you
make better mistakes. Grain and density and dimensional instability will all
come into play. Your hands and body will learn things that sitting before a
computer can’t teach.

To put it another way, picking the right 3D software is probably a woodworking
XY problem. Furniture can and is made without it. Good luck.

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itronitron
I've used FreeCAD for some basic 3D modeling work.

[https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Feature_list](https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Feature_list)

It's free and fairly easy to use.

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chrisbennet
I never hear about this one: "DesignSpark Mechanical" Its a great solid
modeler IMO. It exports .STL, 2D Autocad .DXF's and .PDF's.

[https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/mechanical-software](https://www.rs-
online.com/designspark/mechanical-software)

It's FREE.

I've been using it for years. I used to develop solid a modeler but I have't
used many others so I can't really compare and contrast.

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_jstreet
Matthias Wandel has a website - [https://woodgears.ca/](https://woodgears.ca/)
\- which contains a lot of guides/useful things for woodworking. I don't
believe he has any 3D modelling tools, but he does have some software to help
with building wooden gears, and other useful things.

Doesn't strictly answer your question, but if you're looking to make "simple
furniture" 3D modelling is not strictly necessary, you can do a lot with a few
simple measurements and 2D-designing.

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ckolkey
I know it's not oss, but Fusion360 is free for non-professional use.

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ivan1783
Sketchup or Fusion360 - not OSS but who cares...gets the job done.

