My (first?) 3d printer arrives tomorrow. I’ve been researching for months. One category I’ve been looking into is 3d modeling software. They all have drawbacks (too expensive, too hard to learn, save files in the cloud, etc) but the one that seems to fit the best is this apparently new one called Plasticity. I’d be willing to spend the $150 and then decide after a year if I want to re-up or just keep the current version. Or maybe I’d upgrade every few years or something.

Anyway, there are a bunch of great reviews and tutorials but they’re all over a year old, from when looks like the software was first released.

I’m wondering if anyone here has experience with it and could advise if it’s worth the $150.

  • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 months ago

    I’ve done the trial, and included it in my stickied writeup at !cad@lemmy.world

    It’s not parametric, and for amateur single-part designers the biggest thing there is just that it sucks to realize you screwed up a a height or distance somewhere, and now you have to go back and Boolean on some shape or adjust a bunch of screwholes manually. Constraining drawings and using variables is all very nice if you start making more sophisticated parts or really need to churn them out quickly, but the History is the beautiful part for this use case.

    Other than that, I actually liked it quite a bit. The workflow is pretty intuitive, it works smoothly (on Win10 at least), and it has literally the nicest and most ambitious fillet/chamfer heuristics of anything I tried. It will try its best to fillet things right into oblivion.

    My only other real concern is that it’s a one-man shop, but if it works mostly bug-free for you, that is not necessarily a huge deal, especially at the price point. I think it’s probably a pretty good value, but I already have a non-parametric app I can use well enough, so I went with Alibre Design on a payment plan, so it feels like a slightly expensive subscription, but then I own the license. I’m still hoping FreeCAD 1.0 will be good enough to make me regret the decision to go with Alibre, but we’ll see.