3D printing

3D printing is just one reason why you might output an object model.

All of the CAD packages that we’ve looked at in this Roundup can be used for the design of objects suitable for 3D printing.

OpenSCAD has some recognition amongst the 3D printing community, and there are plenty of examples of it being successfully used for this, and it can output STL files. Certainly, if you like the way that OpenSCAD works, generally, it’s a viable choice for 3D printing.

Although Salome can export STL files, we couldn’t find any documentation for using it as part of a 3D printing workflow. Nor could we find online examples of people using it this way, meaning that there’s scant community support. You could, possibly, use Salome to design an object and then import it into one of the other editors.

Once again, FreeCAD’s popularity gives it an advantage here, and there are plenty of online tutorials and examples of people who use FreeCAD as the centre of a 3D printing setup. This includes YouTube videos that can take you through the entire process. It has all the necessary facilities for 3D printing from start to finish. CadQuery can output the required STL files and it has been used for design of 3D printed objects, but it’s not a very wellknown option. This means that you could end up stuck and without any examples to work from when you hit a problem.

SolveSpace sits in the middle when it comes to how commonly it is used to model 3D objects for printing. It has all the facilities needed to produce a project, but examples of it being used within the community are thin on the ground.