How do folks draw up designs?

CAD & CAM Tool Chain
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Traditional CAD tools such as:

Artist-oriented Bézier curve/vector drawing tools such as:

3D CAD such as:

3D modeling such as:

(possibly assisted by plug-ins such as: https://blendercam.com/ and https://www.cadsketcher.com/)

Integrated CAD/CAM tools such as:

as written up at:

2D Drawing | Design into 3D and Toolpaths | Design into 3D and 3D Modeling from 2D Geometry | Design into 3D

(ob. discl., I work for Carbide 3D)

or programmatically using tools such as:

https://pythonscad.org/

One interesting vector editing approach was that of Futurewave Smartsketch/Flash which is now available as:

What other tools/approaches are there?

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I’ve used photogrammetry in the past as well.

AI: AI height maps generators have made huge leaps in performance in the last few months along with simple basic AI 3d generators.

I am trying to get better with my digital sculpting (Blender/Zbrush).

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I am using the free version of Google Sketchup v. 8.0.
If you go back far enough on archive.org, there is still a download link that works:
GoogleSketchUp v.8.0

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I have a zip-leather book case, and I keep an A5-sized dot-grid notebook in there, along with pens (and permanent markers, whiteboard markers). I use that as my work notebook / journal. When it’s makerspace tool-time, I make a point to write anything in there - from random illegible chicken scratchings, street knowledge (I recently met a guy selling teak wood in the street - and had him scribble down in my notebook where his workshop is, various prices, etc - I just tell people “Write down what I need to know”, and I accumulate some fascinating highly-specific knowledge - like where’s the best buñuelos)

Since it’s dot-grid paper, I will do a few sketches of the idea, and finally use the dotgrid somewhat as a ruler - centimeters (or half…?). I usually get to a point where I have a fairly legible idea of the major parts of the thing I’m building.

At some point, I’ll get excited and want to share it with someone. So I take a picture of the drawing using my phone camera (iPhone). I use the Photos.app Edit mode to (1) Improve the exposure, (2) increase contrast, (3) de-saturate, and I pull in white vignette (this helps because many photos of notebooks have dark corners, and this can cancel that out). Sometimes I’ll use the remote print feature of my phone to send it to my laser printer.

Example:

Work notebook journal

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A photo of a notebook drawing, with the contrast cranked up.

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Quick aside - The iPhone print → over wifi → reliable laser printer is a highly-useful thing. Whenever I get important information, or really need to take care of something (example: taxes!), I print it out. Then I’ll put a magnetic clip on it, and slap it on my magnetic whiteboard!

Later, I might import that image into Inkscape as a background image. Sometimes I’ll re-create parts of image (example: for a hand-drawn letter, I might prefer to use a quality font. Or, instead of drawing a star, I’ll use an emoji/unicode symbol). Thanks to those of you who contribute to free/open-source icon archives & fonts!

At some point, I’m somewhat happy with the SVG. I’ll usefully save a new version of the file (I am continuously saving file snapshots with date/time filename suffix, like /(Project folder)/Design/2D/(Client)_(Project)_Design_(YYYY-MM-DD_HHmm_(Note).svg - I will make progress integrating git earlier into my processes over time, but this is usually how it starts - a bit janky.

Once I have the design SVG save, I’ll make more of a path-oriented version of the design. For example, Kiri:Moto needs the design to be cut from a rectangle stock shape - so in this stage / file, I’ll do things like, (1) create rectangle, (2) select my design and the rectangle, (3) perform a shape subtract, (4) colorize shapes for different machine operations, separate them to other layers, and make it somewhat easy to export them to tools like Kiri:Moto, and FreeCAD Draft workbench.

I’m going in deep learning FreeCAD (but still very early in the learning journey) - so I will use FreeCAD Sketch workbench.

This is kind of a fun part, or highly laborous part (depending on my mood, and how much time I only have) - Making the FreeCAD Sketch shapes, assigning constraints & dimensions to things. I’m learning that, with a good chill playlist and coffee, I can get into it…

Since I’m in extreme learning mode with FreeCAD, a routine I’m finding myself doing, is that I’ll start a project file, get stuck on something, browse forums / post question, and then learn something fundamental, which requires me to start over. So the next day / maker jam session, I’m often starting a new file from scratch - and I’m currently on v3 of this for my Piano keyboard project. In the moment, it can feel frustrating. But in a medium term view, I’m rapidly iterating, and building muscle memory on how to efficiently start projects. Starting to care more about labeling things. (Since I open-source my projects and share links to FreeCAD files in the code repository, I then think - Well, If I want any chance of getting help on my projects, other people will benefit from decent naming… )

Funny story - A few weeks ago, I was so frustrated with FreeCAD, I didn’t even know how to sketch anything… so I decided, I know Inkscape, I’ll just start with that, and set dimensions numerically, so it would be quasi-CAD like. And when I figure out FreeCAD, maybe I can just import it as SVG / geometry. It really sounded like a good idea when I thought it, and thought I discovered a clever cheat code. I’ll just share that this was a huge waste of time, and I just angered myself at being bad at myself using a tool the wrong way, and somewhat understood from a fundamental level why CAD programs were invented to begin with…

I think a longer stretch toolset will be something like

  • Dot Paper notebook / whiteboard
  • Inkscape / Affinity Designer (2D to SVG)
  • FreeCAD Sketch/PartDesign/CAM & Blender (3D meshes?) (2D to 3D / G-code)
  • Universal G-Code sender for (G-code to router operation)

// Jonathan

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Yeah, I kind of wish that CADsketcher (the Solvespace solver plug-in for Blender) had a version for Inkscape (or that Solvespace had a UI which worked for me, or that when I was spending money on CAD tools I’d either purchased Moment of Inspiration or Rhinoceros 3D — I suppose I should give Plasticity another try… https://www.plasticity.xyz/)

For an alternative to FreeCAD have you considered Dune 3D? There’s an updated version, and it looks very promising.

One thing which I wanted for a long while was a vector editor/sketcher for my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ (Android phone w/ Wacom EMR stylus), but these days, I’d want that for my Kindle Scribe instead, and what I usually do (confession time) is fire up Macromedia Freehand on my Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, open it up flat on a Levenger Lap Desk, and use that.

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I had not checked out Dune 3D

From Why Dune? (Why another 3D CAD application? — dune3d 1.2 documentation):

So why another open-source 3D CAD application when FreeCAD and SolveSpace exist? My primary use case for 3D CAD is designing 3D-printed enclosures for my electronics projects. I often found myself procrastinating designing the enclosure and attributed that to my dissatisfaction with the available open source 3D CAD applications.

TL;DR: Dune3D = Solver and workflow from SolveSpace + Open CASCADE + Horizon EDA user interface

One reason I’m using FreeCAD is for the CAM (model → CNC router operations) workbench. Does Dune 3D handle that?

Frustratingly, haven’t powered on the CNC for weeks, due to figuring out FreeCAD (example: last night I spent 2 hours trying to find out how to etch 3D shapes - for examples; the diagonal edges of chamfers. Couldn’t figure it out, gave it a rest).

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Dune 3D does not do CAM — you’d need to import files into a 3D CAM tool such as Kiri:Moto or pyCAM.

Doing chamfers in 3D shapes is a big part of why I’ve been working on

as noted above — but it’s a programmatic, not interactive tool.

Kind of a shame that SketchNC never got further along:

(though I have to admit that I mostly just use Carbide Create (ob. discl., I work for Carbide 3D).

It does make doing chamfering quite easy:

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(just assign a No Offset toolpath — if desired, slightly offset the geometry so that one uses the upper portion of the V tool, distributing the wear)

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I’ve been using Blender for about 13 years and you can very easily use the vanilla version (no add-ons) to create your stl designs. It has gotten incredibly powerful in the last few years but you do have to be meticulous in your workflow to create usable models for cnc and 3d print. It gives you total freedom to create terrible geometry that is not usable for real world fabrication. Blender is NOT CAD.

Also, Blender is not just one system.

There are multiple modeling systems included. Polygonal (box modeling), Curves, Nurbs, Metaball, Geometry Nodes. These are all included in vanilla Blender. Using add-ons you can use additional modeling systems and expansion of capabilities to the current systems.

Also included are multiple physics simulation systems.

I keep eye balling Plasticity but my brain has a hard time with CAD now after using Blender for so long.

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One CAD tool I don’t see mentioned often if not at all is VariCAD. My first project making production parts was designed in VariCAD. It supported Linux 20 years ago and was a stand-alone product for around $200 back then.
They still have Linux and Windows versions but their price has jumped to $995 with a $335 annual update subscription.

FreeCAD, OpenSCAD and Inkscape with a little bit of Blender are my go-to tools today.

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Plasticity is supposed to be very approachable for folks familiar w/ Blender.

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My main design tools of choice are:

Affinity Designer for vector things. I didn’t mind paying a one time fee of $26 when I got it on sale in early 2020.

Onshape (the free version) for any 3D design work. I often use it for 2D layout/design too though, due to the parametric aspect and it being able to also output PDF and SVG files. I just realized I’ve been using it for a few months shy of 10 years now!

And the good old yellow notepad and a Fisher Space pen. :smile:

I should look at Blender again since it’s been probably 7 years since I last looked at it.

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You might laugh but I will use Tinkercad for quick and dirty designs for 3D printing.

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I use BlockSCAD quite often to rough out a design as noted above, and need to get back to using OpenSCAD Graph Editor.