Hello community, I’ll try to be brief. My 13 year old son got a 3d printer as a gift, and I’d like to learn alongside him. We have 0 experience. However, I am a data scientist, so lots of professional Python experience, if that helps. We’re a foss/Linux family so my questions are:

What tools are the best to learn for 3d printing for me? I am ready to learn CAD programming. Can you all recommend a tech stack and resources to learn it?

    • ArtVandelay@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Thanks for this. I was initially thinking of starting with OpenSCAD but FreeCAD was another contender. Perhaps I need to go with whichever has the best documentation, examples, and learning resources.

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        TinkerCAD is free and browser-based. It’s remarkably powerful for something that’s basically explicitly supposed to be simple enough a child could learn to use it.

        And I’ll second trying to understand some G-code. When a malfunction causes your print to stop cleanly midway, pretty much your only way to salvage it is to figure out which Z-layer it malfunctioned at, and directly edit the G-code to start where it left off. It’s finicky, but a lifesaver on large prints. Nothing is worse than 30 hour print failing 80% of the way in.