One of the fingers of my robots hands broke. I tried making another one in tinkercad but they have indentations and curves so I failed miserably. The fingers are all the same so I can get all the measurements but my CAD skills are zero. Anyone know of an easy tool to use to make a model or perhaps just convert a photo into an STL file if I provide the XYZ coordinates?
I don't really swear by it, TinkerCAD is a useful tool in a few instances, it's great when you are making basic shapes or combining STLs. In those applications, it excels and you can make things quite quickly. When it comes to making professional-looking pieces with Chamfers and fillets, it fails miserably. As Nink suggested, you have to make your own chamfers out of shapes. This is the exact reason I'm migrating to Fusion360. Chamfers and Fillets are a breeze and it supports importing of TinkerCAD files. It will take a lot of time to make the migration but I'm ready to move to the next level on my CAD journey.
Here's the popular CAD software for 3D print modelling these days:
FreeCAD is an open-source parametric modeling tool and Blender is an open-source direct modeling tool. I have tried both. Both are free for the full versions of the software. Fusion360 and Onshape are subscription-based with free access to some tools and are limited without a subscription.
FreeCAD has a terrible UI IMHO. Blender is direct modelling and I want parametric (much better for engineering models) OnShape isn't as popular as Fusion360.
I am choosing to go the Fusion360 route because the UI is really good, there is a ton of support on YouTube, and TinkerCAD files are supported (of which I have made 400+ designs over the past 5 years).
Thanks Jeremie. I just Installed fusion 360. There is a FREE version Woot!. wow learning curve on this is going to be steep.
Fusion360 is great as well. Bonus is they post their own tutorials and tons of folks do too. Making strides there Nink