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3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![](URL)
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
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.