- Joined
- Apr 29, 2023
- Messages
- 13
I haven't used Tinkercad specifically, but I've worked with a ton of different CAD technologies.I am going to make some more tool holders for my lathe and I figured I'd make a cad drawing for fun. I could just copy the one in hand but wanted to exercise my mind a little drawing it up. I have everything but the dovetail on the back before I thought, can I even print this in a drafting format for machining? I dont see that as an option with tinkercad. Freecad makes my brain go fuzzy. I can export to .obj .stl .glb and .svg. Do any of these formats play nice with other cad programs? If so would someone want to import it to their program and show the measurements in a 3 view(or iso I guess)? I'm not done with it yet, I figure why bother unless I can do something with the end file.
Based on the available export types, tinkercad is modeling in polygons (triangles), not precise solids and surfaces (e.g. planes, cylinders, spheres, splines). As some said, 3D printing runs off of polygonal models and these models are generally precise enough for hobby work. They won't play nicely with most 2D CAD programs (e.g. AutoCAD) because the drafting tools there expect to find circles, not a tessellated approximation of a circle (just one instance of the difference in shape definitions). They also don't play well with precise 3D CAD programs.
Some better 3D CAD applications that have free trial versions:
SketchUp (also polygonal, but miles better than tinkercad and does have a drawing package called Layout)
Onshape (precise 3D CAD, like traditional mechanical CAD programs; quite similar to SolidWorks in behavior but all in the browser)