I recently bought an A1 mini. I was able to print a model from the SD card, and an STL model via Bambu Studio.
Seems they use 3MF (a zipfile with a triangular mesh in XML and some metadata) or STL (either binary or ASCII mesh, pure co-ordinates with no colour or materials specification).
What do people recommend to create STL ? Preferably for free on Linux. I’m mostly interested in producing dimensioned objects, rather than free-form models like artwork.
Currently I’m working on a heat-exchanger core. Because I’m a bit of a nerd, I’m using an old 2D drawing program (Xfig) that I’m thoroughly familiar with to make 2D shapes, then extending them in Z. I convert that to an OOGL format for an old fast geometry viewer (Geomview), then convert that to ASCII STL, making polygons into triangular pie wedges so the slicer will accept it. I’ve also converted STL back to OOGL to view models from elsewhere.
That all works, sort of. I have partly overlapping 3D objects, but Bambu Studio doesn’t seem to mind. So far I’ve printed 1/3 of the core to test the process.
The core is basically 3 layers of blind channels, so it maps nicely to different layers in the 2D program. But next I want to make a manifold, which is 3 pipe sections at something like 20 degrees apart - no layers or right angles. What’s a good free program to do something like that, that’s not ridiculously complex or require a subscription or cloud connection ? Preferably that runs on CentOS 8, though Fedora 40 or Windows 11 is a possibility.
FreeCAD, OpenSCAD and Blender are all excellent (but all need some learning - as with any CAD software). FreeCAD gets a bad rep for usability, but its Part Design workbench is my go-to for most things, especially since the recent 1.0 release.
LibreCAD is 2D only (unless something big has changed recently) , so probably not much different that XFig, but maybe more parametric.
There are web based options too, but I have no experience with those.
OnShape runs in browser and has a free tier. You can use it on Linux as well.
With FreeCAD, the UI is not as refined as commercial packages, but you get the functionality that other applications (at free tier) lack. For example, free tier of Fusion360 doesn’t let you use the optimized mesh converter that would removed a lot of unnecessary geometry after you import the stl.
I’ve tried FreeCAD 1.0 and while it’s UI is more refined than in previous versions, I still prefer the RealThunder fork. For example, if you reference external geometry in a sketch and then change something in a preceding step, causing references to break, in the RT fork there’s the option to “attach external geometry” so you can quickly fix broken references. I didn’t see this option in 1.0 and had to delete and redo references
Thanks to those who replied.
I’ve had a quick look at most of the suggestions.
OpenSCAD - there’s an AppImage that runs on Centos8. SCAD seems to be a math-based tool, describing objects in a readable text file, cylinders with radius etc. Can include DXF files. There’s no import ability I can see but a rich set of export formats, including OFF that works with Geomview. I’ve not tried building anything.
FreeCAD - again there’s an AppImage that runs. Very slow and glitchy to download to my laptop via Starlink; I got a copy on my cloud server first then copied it from there. Imports various formats including OFF.
Tinkercad - online tool, fairly minimalist, has a library of odd things like figurines and vehicle parts but not entirely comprehensive. Runs reasonably fast on my laptop. Imports STL and OBJ (faces, vertices with colour), exports STL.
Onshape - complex online tool, needs a good network connection. Slow and glitchy for me. Exports all sorts of formats such as STEP, OBJ, 3MF,Solidworks, Inventor, STL, DXF,DWG.
There’s some editing ability in Bambu Studio, for instance I was able to take a manifold I’d created in XFig as an extrusion and make a hole in it by adding a negative primitive (cuboid), then physically insert and glue a rectangular pipe in place.