Who has the ability to add a category for "designs"(=things) and for discussion about

Who has the ability to add a category for “designs”(=things) and for discussion about “design/CAD software”? Maybe also for “news”.

Added “News” and “Software”, the latter to cover design, slicing, and host software as well as printer firmware.

cool!

Could you also add a section for materials - now there is no apparent place to discuss i.e. nylon, laywood, etc. what kind of temperatures they require, what surface they stick onto, how they can be painted etc.

As far as materials, wouldn’t that be a good fit for questions/help? We don’t really have that many materials to select from, and things like laywood/nylon could be discussed in development. I don’t see there actually being that much raw discussion regarding material types.

Material suppliers would go there too. There are huge quality differences between some of the suppliers of abs and pla.

Good point @Whosa_whatsis , I didn’t think about the possibility of discussing batch quality, suppliers, etc.

I’ve created a 3D Modeling software group:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/100797509797391898273
It’s got a game/film creation slant to it but CAD is CAD.

I see 3D modelling for rendering pretty pictures as VERY different to CAD.
Other tools, other constraints, other work flow even other basic data models.

I’m aware that there’s a distinction that people like to make but the overlap is far, far greater than the difference between the two fields. I find exploring shared areas of expertise to be far more fruitful than exaggerating differences.
If the model has no holes and if the parts aren’t too thin, can you not print it?

I can print it but I basically can’t edit it anymore the second it’s exported from a volumetric, parametric CAD model to a polygon mesh. Parameters are gone, curves are no longer perfectly round, sketches are gone, constraints are gone, dependencies of multiple parts on an assembly are gone.

Ah, see there your assuming that all game and film modelling is created from baked, polygonal meshes with no parametric control. That’s just not the case - I like to keep my models as higher level descriptions for as long as possible and my software is all built for non-linear workflow. That’s pretty typical in game and film, I think - certainly it’s not a different subject from industrial CAD, just a different expression of it.
The snobbery I see from that industry is more a form of protectionism or ‘Not invented hereitis’ as far as I can tell
In some cases, it doesn’t matter - for parts that are merely decorative, parametric controls become less important. I can still re-parametrize models using various modifiers, anyway.

Im’ aware of what you can do with IK-skeletons and other forms of rigging for animation but what else is possible?

Well, 3D Modelling programs are CAD programs; the amount of things you can do depends on the program but just as I can do measured chamfers and extrusions on NURB data sets in Solidworks, so I can do that in Maya, Max, Softimage or Blender. Under the hood, they all use similar basic maths, just with a front end more geared towards one market or the other.
Combining the best of all of them and sweeping away the crud, would be my preferred option.