Join the Conversation

3 Comments

  1. nice article, but i’m confused no the free software part. . . from the looks of things, alibre costs $100 for the “PE” edition, which doesn’t include stp import (which appears to have been used in this article).

    i’ve always been interested in doing some 3d mechanical modeling/design (i’m primarily an electrical guy). unfortunately i haven’t found any free open source, or even just free/”low cost” options for 3d modeling with usable, real-world inputs/outputs (step, stl, iges, gcode, etc). i’ve used google sketchup but they want $500 for it to output anything but a google earth format.

    does anyone here have any suggestions (this article calls out alibre, which looks to be around $1k)?

    From the looks of things cambam is great once you have a stl or dxf to feed it.

      1. no worries. . .i am really curious about what people are using at home for 3d modeling though. i see quite a few projects with that seem like they’d require some modeling (and useful export) – i guess most people probably have student editions of the pro packages like Solid Works.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.