# FreeWare for 3D design and printing (and digital painting)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freeware-for-3d-design-and-printing-and-digital-painting/738480>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 24, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freeware-for-3d-design-and-printing-and-digital-painting/738480 "2015-11-24T21:55:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freeware-for-3d-design-and-printing-and-digital-painting/738480/1 "2015-11-24T21:55:00Z")

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Hi y’all!

I’ve been thinking about starting to do some 3D design work looking to take that to 3D printing. I used to be a model maker for a living and would like to restart those skills in a hobby setting, with a vague vision of commercial applications WAY down the line. It looks like there are some nice choices out there for freeware to get started. Anybody have some experience in using these programs? It looks like _ **blender** _, _ **SketchUp** _, _ **Autodesk 123D** _, and _ **FreeCAD** _ are the 500 gorillas. Any preferences among those who have been fooling around with these? I’ve dabbled very lightly with\*\*\* blender\*\*\* and it seems to have a massive community behind it, but that might be the case with all of them. And on first inspection \*\*\*Autodesk 123D \*\*\*has surface capture from photographs. That might be really handy.

The other aspect is digital painting. This is not really on any front burner, but it seems that _ **blender** _ incorporates imaging right along with 3D design.

Any advice, recommendations, warnings or cookie recipes are all sought…

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**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freeware-for-3d-design-and-printing-and-digital-painting/738480/2 "2015-12-18T17:06:29Z")

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And for that matter, any experiences using **Shapeways** or some such online 3D printing house?