minordemon

I have tried 123D Design and found it very limited. Autodesk also has Fusion 360 (for which we qualifiy for Free use). Fusion is a very capable modeling program. http://fusion360.autodesk.com/pricing I have also used Creo Elements Direct/Express. This is also quite capable, but quite unlike other CAD programs, so it has a high learning curve.

Hi Jonny, STL exporting is fine, although you don't get much feedback. You must press the Options button and adjust the Max Deviation setting, because the default is too course. And yes is takes some getting used to, at first is seems quite unwieldy. Don't try and figure out the pattern functions too soon, because they are odd. But mirroring works fine, and so do extrusions, filets, chamfers, drafts, shelling etc.

I was wondering why use 33% infill? There is no structural strength needed, so wouldn't an infill of 10 or 15% be enough? Or is there some magical anti-warping or surface quality considerations involved? I'm pretty new to printing and haven't strayed much from the default Cura settings (besides enabling retraction and support). So I am pretty interested in what I can change and why. Jeroen

Yes, Creo E/DM E is free. It requires you to make an account on their website and the program needs to connect to the internet every 72 hours. And it is limited to assemblies of max 60 parts. Link is here: http://www.ptc.com/products/creo-elemen ... g-express/ As for the naming, it's not that easy: Creo Direct is a new product (i think) Creo Parametric is the new name for Pro/E Wildfire Creo Elements/Direct Modeling is the new name for Cocreate Creo Elements/Direct Modeling Express is the new name for Cocreate Personal Edition

I am pretty happy about Creo. It is free and has a pretty strong feature set, a lot stronger that 123D Design. It is a solid modeling program, no polygon modeling, not history based, but you can adjust a lot afterwards. You can move sections and it tries to keep all blends ect. alive. So far I have not found many limitations, besides two rail sweeps. It can even to a bit of G2 blending (by selecting continuous curvature) to make smoother fillets. It has a bit high learning curve, but there are a lot of blender users, so that should pose no problems :lol: And it uses different meanings for words than usual, like features for subgroups, and taper for drafts. My biggest complain is that it has the most impossible name imaginable. Impossible to remember, a disaster to find on the internet. (especially with all the other Creo programs like Creo 2.0, Creo Parametric, Creo Direct, Creo Elements/Direct, etc.) Is anyone else using it? What are your experiences about the limitations? Just for reference: I have prior experience with Rhino (with Grasshopper), Solid Edge, Solid Works, Pro/Engineer, Autocad, Form Z. (Professionally only with the first two)

Creo Elements/Direct Modeling Express!! (Formerly PTC Cocreate like mentioned above). This one is free, but requires an internet connection every 72 hours. It saves in pk2 fileformat which doesn't transfer to the professional version. I do not know why you would need to upgrade to the professional version. Assemblies of over 60 parts are quite rare, and I think I read somewhere you can work with subassemblies if you need to. It is quite feature rich and has a reasonably high learning curve, but it is not very limiting. The name is hopeless, also because there are several similarily named ones in the Creo range.