What is Your Favorite 3D Modeling Software for 3D Printing? - Shapeways Blog

What is Your Favorite 3D Modeling Software for 3D Printing?

October 26, 2011

There are so many software options now to 3D model for 3D printing we would like to know which CAD packages you use?

Let us know so we can consider what tools we can provide to make 3D printing with Shapeways easier for you.

Last time we asked on Facebook the most popular were 3D Studio Max, Maya, ZBrush and Blender with 36 different applications being used..

So what do you use?

software What's Hot

Comments

  1. Henry Segerman - Rhino.
  2. jeff - solidworks
  3. Kalen - Hexagon….though the bugs are killing me.
  4. Ray - Blender
  5. oscar - Solidworks. I’m sure there must be something better out there, but that’s what I’ve been taught.
  6. John Bear Ross - Rhino. So easy even I can use it.
  7. Lace - Blender all the way, baby.
  8. BFDesigns - Rhino 4.0. Also learning how to use ZBrush but will still have to export to Rhino afterwards for scaling and STL generation.
  9. Stephen Cameron - OpenSCAD
  10. Julian - I use Sketchup and would love Shapeways to support it better. It is very easy to start using and as a free, Google, product, it’s in wide use. My 13 year old daughter learnt to use it in very little time.

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  1. Aaron - In addition to the ones mentioned, I also like Wings3D for making designs for 3D printing. It almost always delivers perfectly manifold meshes.
  2. Stony Smith - OpenSCAD was the first thing that allowed me to build and upload models that would print properly, and I still use it for many items. But, I’d say my main tool is TrueSpace – I’ve used it for 20 years.
  3. Mike Hicks - What? no love for MOI (moment of inspiration)? Created by the originator of Rhino but a whole lot cheaper!

...

We will have to see how we can best integrate this software for use with Shapeways.

Does anyone still use the Solidworks plug-in to upload directly to Shapeways? It even works with the student editions that cannot export STL 😉