Software Recommendations Needed  

RE: Software Recommendations Needed

It might help if you show us a picture of the item. As it stands, we have no idea what you want to create, and hence very little basis for recommending tools that could achieve this unknown goal.

Blender and Photogrammetry

While both *can* be accurate in experienced hands, in neither case is it going to be easy.

As @jurgen-7 says, it's hard to recommend anything with so little information - but I find most technical parts easiest to duplicate with OpenSCAD.

Cheerio,

RE: Software Recommendations Needed

It takes a long while to become proficient with any CAD software so you might be better advised to find some expert that has design experience in creating the type of model you want, if this has a short time deadline. Blender is great for organic designs; and some examples might be figurines, flowers, cartoon-type characters and animals.. things with lots of curved surfaces. I view Blender in the “sculpting” category of tools. OpenSCAD is more oriented to those with programming experience as it does not have a graphical interface for defining your model (Diem can correct me if that is incorrect). You create a block of code statements and then look at the model that is rendered after compiling the statements. I have some minor experience with it, but I’ve not used it for extensive work. I’ve used it for designs that have lots of simple shapes that are quick to define in syntax.

But for architectural creations, it is hard to beat Fusion 360. It is free, with some limitations, and I use it extensively on a Mac. It has a huge following (as do many CAD packages) It will go way, way beyond what you will ever learn in a few years. There are many, many tutorials on the Internet and courses you can take on platforms like Udemy. And I strongly recommend some basic courses. It’s not something you are going to pickup in a week.

Think about what types of models you want to create and then research the various CAD packages out there. Be prepared for a multi-year learning experience that will be very rewarding, as you can then start to solve so many personal problems by designing your own items. 

I’d also strongly recommend some night courses at a local College if any exist near you. Then you can also share in the experience of the people attending and instructing. 

If you need something next Thursday, find someone experienced.

RE: Software Recommendations Needed

Disagree with Crab in some particulars, I do all my hard surface designs in Blender.  Relegating it to sculptures just shows how poor an understanding they have of the software.  Its a tool that can do pretty much anything.  It does however have a VERY steep learning curve.  So I agree that if you are on a deadline probably not the best tool to try and learn quickly. 

RE: Software Recommendations Needed

RE: Software Recommendations Needed

These are photos of the parts I need to make. The black part houses a camera, wifi box and a battery pack.

RE: Software Recommendations Needed

I have no experience with Blender.. was just going by my impressions from a few articles I had read or watched.. So certainly Neophyl would be much more accurate.. and Diem would be much more knowledgeable about the particulars of OpenSCAD. You'll find each has strengths and weaknesses.. I really like what I can do in fusion.. especially its timelines and parametric design.. but it is not unique in those capabilities.

Posted by: @neophyl

Disagree with Crab in some particulars, I do all my hard surface designs in Blender.  Relegating it to sculptures just shows how poor an understanding they have of the software.  Its a tool that can do pretty much anything.  It does however have a VERY steep learning curve.  So I agree that if you are on a deadline probably not the best tool to try and learn quickly. 

RE: Software Recommendations Needed

Whatever design software you use your best friend is going to be a set of callipers for something like that.

RE: Software Recommendations Needed

I have calipers for the measurements but I was looking at using TripoSR, Meshi.ai or something else that I can take numerous photos of and see what the output is. I'd love to try and create/duplicate this in Blender (import the photo and draw to detail), but I've only been able to create simple stuff in Blender and again...I'm not that proficient with it. It's not a rush project but the owner does need to have the original back in a week and then I can have it back. I went to the website this item was purchased from and emailed them asking if they sell ONLY the internal parts or if they are willing to sell the stl file but I haven't received a reply in 3 days which is what I expected. It's pretty much creating a few cube meshes and extruding some parts and collapsing others. I will give it a try but I know it will not turn out like the same. Thank you all for your inputs. I was trying to see if there was some software out there where I could get the output I needed.

OK,so the original was 3D printed by someone who was happy to trade speed for cosmetic quality and used slightly damp filament ...

You might do better to ask for a step file - or ask for 'step or stl', as that's likely to be used by most engineering shops - PrusaSlicer is happy to use either.

To make your own the first step is to reduce the part to a set of drawings with accurate measurements for everything.

To reproduce?  Almost any 3D CAD package, Almost because it really needs parametric design as your first prototype will probably need tweaking and it's easier that way so I would not suggest TinkerCAD.  FreeCAD could do it though, there are plenty of tutorials on line.  OpenSCAD as I suggested upthread would be suitable as would Blender 'though not for a beginner; most of the other software will be expensive - including Fusion 360 if this is any sort of commercial service (free is for hobby use only.)  

Cheerio,

RE: Software Recommendations Needed

I also noticed on the internals it appears to be 2 main parts glued and screwed together with some other smaller brackets that hold the cables and battery pack down. It might be easier to try and take it all apart and see what all shapes/designs actually need to be made. That might make it easier for me to try and recreate. Thank you for the advice and I will first try this in Blender as I'm comfortable with extruding and some other minor tasks. If I can't do it, I'll try FreeCad. I was just reading the past few days of these programs where you simply take a ton of photos of an object and import them and it kicks out the object.

Photogrammetry is a remarkable technique and very useful sometimes - but I would never use it for a technical part.

It is extremely useful for high quality reproductions of rough surfaced, irregular objects where one face is irrelevant - a statue or a museum vase for example but it will need post processing as all it reproduces is the visible surface without any dimensions so you first have to close the underside and any holes/shadows in the outer skin then accurately measure and scale the part before deciding what you can throw away - a good scan makes a huge mesh especially around any textured surface - very often that textured surface also includes micro-holes so you spend a long time reducing the mesh selectively.

Quite crude scans are OK for game elements or CGI movie rendering hence the easy shortcut reputation but annoyingly that doesn't apply for 3D printing.

A typical scan takes the best part of a day to clean up/repair to printable standard - I would expect to reproduce your part in OpenSCAD in a couple of hours at most.

Cheerio,