My (first?) 3d printer arrives tomorrow. I’ve been researching for months. One category I’ve been looking into is 3d modeling software. They all have drawbacks (too expensive, too hard to learn, save files in the cloud, etc) but the one that seems to fit the best is this apparently new one called Plasticity. I’d be willing to spend the $150 and then decide after a year if I want to re-up or just keep the current version. Or maybe I’d upgrade every few years or something.
Anyway, there are a bunch of great reviews and tutorials but they’re all over a year old, from when looks like the software was first released.
I’m wondering if anyone here has experience with it and could advise if it’s worth the $150.
I still vote FreeCAD. I know Blender too, but I can put down FreeCAD for months and focus on other things. When I return to designing on FreeCAD I have very little skills decay. I have to go make the canonical tutorial doughnut (YT) almost every time I do Blender. I also have some stuff saved with notes for manually editing quad mesh objects, and converting to quads, but now that is on my old backup comp.
This is my primary gripe with renting software. I invest enormous time in learning these things. I am not for sale. I own my time investment and no one has a right to steal that from me. I’ve only used FreeCAD a couple of times in the last year. I’ve spent most of my time on other projects. Printing is not my only hobby or interest. It is a tool and a skill I own, and it complements my other tools and skills well. To me, this is a fundamental part of life as a citizen in a democracy. Once upon a time, around 1k years ago, the average person had no right to own property or their tools. They were called serfs and this societal structure is called feudalism. No ancient citizen of a democracy wanted feudalism. There was no changing of the guard, or coup that started feudalism. People slowly gave up their land and rights to live closer to private security forces of the rich. They trusted them to do the right thing. Eventually they became slaves to those feudal lords with only a theoretical right to recourse from rape and murder.
The software features of CAD are finite. There is nothing to develop in some ongoing fashion forever. Open source is slower and a bit messy at times, but it has been around for a very long time.