There are many FREE CAD suites that make designing for the 3D printer a breeze. Each one has its strengths, so try 'em all and see which works best for you!

  • Blender: This feature rich software can create everything from solid models for printing to full fledged, cinema quality, video. Although the learning curve is a bit steep, there is a huge amount of support available in their community forum and elsewhere online.
  • Tinkercad: Revived by Autodesk, Tinkercad provides an easy to learn solid modeling environment that links directly to your Thingiverse account.

This guide was first published on Aug 05, 2013. It was last updated on Aug 28, 2012.

This page (Free 3D CAD) was last updated on Aug 03, 2013.

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