Fusion 360 as well. I think it's great for rapid development, I'd love some of the paid options but not enough. Haven't found anything else that comes close to its power whilst still costing nothing.
this post was submitted on 15 May 2026
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Either SketchUp 2017 or FreeCAD depending upon complexity
Sketchup was used in the real world? I remember using it in the mid 2000s to make a castle to add across the street from my house in Earth.
It was first thing I used when starting on Anet A8.
I liked that it was simple had all kind of add-ons for 3D printing (solid inspector, BezierSpline, Fredo Corner, Tax Engineering, ...)
so I just kept using it
I bounced pretty hard off Free ad and ended up using OnShape. I don't feel great about it though.
Fusion360 for non-organic and Blender (with add-ons) for organic. I don't like fusion360 for organic stuff. FreeCAD was supposed to get a big update at some point but I never tried it. Autodesk Inventor was alright but I didn't like it as much as Fusion360.
FreeCAD, as of today, looks and feels like it was made in 2010 or earlier. I’m sure there is a type of person who FreeCAD check all their boxes and excites them to no end, but I am, sadly, not in that group.
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What are the main reasons you dislike fusion? I use MatterCAD - it's full of headaches and bugs but I find it super intuitive and a very low learning curve.
I've beens thinking of trying fusion despite disliking Adobe.
Adobe doesn’t own fusion. Did you mean Autodesk?
The cloud. I hate it. It also has way more than I actually need. It’s bulky. It’s importing assets is very limited in ways that I need.
I’ll take a look at MatterCAD. Thank you for the suggestion.
Yes, but I dislike both Adobe and auto desk. The learning curve felt steep to me last time I looked at fusion.
I can't wrap my head around 2D interfaces for doing 3D modelling.
I know my measurements, so OpenSCAD feels more natural. I have done a fair amount of 3D programming in the last three decades, though.
I am a big fan of OnShape, its free for personal use. By that they mean that all your projects are publicly accessible when using the free options. Otherwise its the same as the paid option. As a hobbiest this is fine with me because I am putting all my stuff up with a creative commons license anyway. It is my way of giving back to a community that has given me so many designs for free.
Teaching tech did a great introductory series on it which includes a video about why he chose on shape.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGqRUdq5ULsONnjEEPeBxxStEsobDKAtV
If you have experience with other cad programs you'll probably get through the videos quickly as the concepts translate from software to software, its just a difference in interface and execution.
I really wish onshape had a middle area between free and 1500 USD/y
Same with Shapr3D (which doesn’t export high res in free mode) I just can’t justify paying for subscriptions when I use it sporadically.
I don’t sell, and I don’t create frequently
Uhhhggggg I hate modern software!!!
OK, use the free tier if you don't sell... And if you don't like the terms, FreeCAD is your option.
Public files aren’t okay. Using public files as a way to get people to pay is also not okay.
What I’m getting from this community is to stick with Fusion. Which is fine I guess.
Curious what the hangup with that is?
I use 3dstudio lol, because I know how it works quite well for my needs.
For 3d printing.
Wow that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while!
😁
I have a licensed seat of Solidworks on my work computer; that's where I learned to solid model. I also have an older pirated copy on my home computer but it requires Windows.
If I had to choose something free I would probably choose Onshape because it is very similar to Solidworks (it was created with help from one of the founders of Solidworks). However it sucks that all of your models are public.
Otherwise, the only viable option in my eyes would be Fusion 360.
I haven't tried it, but I know there is a plugin for Blender that allows you to do parametric modelling but I'm sure the options are pretty limited.
Honestly most of the time I get by fine with Tinkercad if I'm making something functional, Blender if it's decorative.
Used to use fusion 360, hate cloud, freecad is painful to use, been trying out plasticity and it seems pretty decent
With plasticity, do you make precision parts where .1mm matters or is it more decorative designs?
My current use case right now is designing tiles and a set for a ttrpg campaign, so currently more the latter. As far as I’m aware though you can do some of the former it’s just that it’s not exactly the workflow you’d be used to. Precision isn’t the issue so much as having history I suppose. Just means you have to plan out your design a lot more ahead of time. I’ve tried some of the code based stuff like build123d since I’m a programmer and the like but frankly they never made much sense to me, although perhaps that’s the way it uses Python more than anything else. Admittedly I didn’t spent a whole lot of time on it though and I was pretty burned out at the time.
I also don't have a good solution and I'm extremely slowly writing my own stuff starting from svg and drawings and some programming to do geometry. But I mostly haven't touched 3d yet.
I would use blender which you have already excluded so no idea.
Well, CAD and “3D” are not the same thing. Blender is good for 3d, but cad features are stapled on. Also blender has too many knobs—that is not useful for CAD
SolidWorks