A question that hasn’t come around for a few years. Currently 3D software are people using for designing? Sketchup and Solidworks were strong recommendations at one time, but what are people using now?
As more and more of my designs are 3D rather than 2D layers I figure it really is time I moved beyond inkscape into the 3D world.
I love sketchup but they did away with the free tier so now I am using an increasingly out of date version. The free web based sketchup isn’t nearly as good and the pricing is too steep for something that I use casually. Someday my old desktop version will stop working, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. :-/
I’m using Shapr3D. It has iOS, Mac and Windows versions and it seems more intuitive to me than the others.
$300/year.
OP didn’t say anything about cost 
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I’m grandfathered in at a lower cost, but yeah, it’s pricy to get access to the full capability. There is a limited function free tier.
I figure, I can indulge myself with a few things like this because I don’t spend money on pricey other things like eating out or going on fancy vacations.
A lot of the 3D software is amazingly expensive. Just looking at Autodesk Inventor Pro - $2,500. Regular Fusion 360 is $600.
I’ve also been suggested OpenSCAD - but that is building by program - which maybe works for me. OnShape is free and FreeCAD release candidate has export for laser and is free.
I’m still using Fusion 360 (free hobby license) for complex objects. I use it for personal designs (both laser and 3d printer) but would need to look elsewhere for things I’d want to sell. Simpler laser things I still do in Inkscape since ultimately everything is created from 2D parts.
Mostly, I design 3D stuff in Inkscape but, I have used FreeCAD for a couple things:
There is a workbench (add-on) for working with laser-cutting that does things like add tabs to join pieces and, create flattened export images for cutting:
Here is the first demo video I saw:
Don’t forget the more organic style of modeling. If you are an iOS user, Nomad is very reasonably priced and you can get amazing results. Check out @evermorian for some amazing designs (mostly on Instagram).
Oh, hilarious, you just posted while I was composing. You should link to some of your sculpted images.
This. I use it rarely, but I feel no guilt as the license is free. Now, that only works if you’re not selling, but I’m not so it’s great. They do hide it, and you have to renew it (and find were they’ve hid it) but it’s hard to argue with the capability at that price!
Thanks for thinking of me!
I was assuming @sqw was looking to mainly model planar things for production with the laser (e.g., boxes, little model buildings, etc.). FreeCAD is great for that.
Nomad Sculpt is wonderful for creating more organic forms. The iPad interface works really well for that kind of modeling. I use that and Blender for things I 3D print all the time. I did come up with an approach for using it to do 3D engraves. After creating a model, you can export a depth map that will work on the Glowforge.
I did a tutorial video showing how to model a bit of Celtic knotwork and 3D engrave it. There is also a short follow-up video showing an easier way to export a depth map straight out of Nomad Sculpt (that feature was added after I did the first video). That technique should work for pretty much anything you wanted to model and 3D engrave.
I know there is a path to get SVGs for planar stuff out of Blender (and therefore out of Nomad Sculpt, if you route your model through Blender) but, I have not really explored that. There are some posts about that here in the forum somewhere.
Of course, you can do all kinds of other fun stuff with 3D modeling:
In addition to Instagram, I post most of my projects on my personal site:
Fusion 360 in the full version.
Between F360 and the Adobe Creative Cloud I’m spending about $1.1K/yr.
Worth it to me.
When I play with 3D modeling, I use Fusion 360.
When designing for the Glowforge, I still use Inkscape.
Oh, I’ve played some with CAD-like functionality layered onto Blender. Very interesting and promising!
I researched free CAD and ended up sticking with the Fusion 360 hobby license.
There are no awesome options. The truly free stuff like FreeCAD kind of sucks, and the free tiers of commercial apps have some unpleasant limitations. For example, at least one of them requires your projects to be accessible to the public. Fusion 360 will delete files if you don’t touch them for a year.
That reminds me, I have to figure out how to export my work as something more editable than an STL…
After getting another recommendation for FreeCad (adding OpenTheme, Dynamic Data, and Lattice2 Workbench) so I’m giving it a shot! Wish me luck 
Good luck!
I recently started playing with the LCInterlocking workbench (which is for creating interlocking tabbed parts for lasercutting or CNC production).
I have already been doing parametric stuff by creating spreadsheets and referencing values from them in dimensional equations. I’m not sure what Dynamic Data adds beyond that but, might try it at some point to see.
The Lattice2 workbench looks useful!
There are some good macros floating around, too. There is one that lets you fill a form to create a box, much like the web-based box generators. It’s in the ObjectCreation section of this “peer-reviewed” archive:
Direct link:
I also still use Fusion 360. They have played a lot of games with the pricing and it makes it uncomfortable to recommend. But it’s just such an amazing piece of software that I spent the time to get reasonably good at.
I keep meaning to play around with Blender. It’s a very different tool, but something I’d like to get some experience with.
It’s interesting! Se things are easier, some not.