Today, the kitchen whiteboard penholder clip broke. What a timely opportunity to try the 3D printer! I just needed to model a replacement, using a micrometer to measure the existing part and make something similar.

The question was whether it would be easier for me, as a newbie, to model this part in FreeCAD or OpenSCAD. I tried FreeCAD first, using the sketch workbook that seemed right for creating a 2D shape and then extruding it, but I simply couldn’t get the complex polygon defined, and the interface kept doing things I didn’t expect.

So I decided to try OpenSCAD. I found this cheat sheet that linked into the documentation and maybe 30 minutes later I printed my first prototype that worked well except that I had to tweak sizes to work around the Z-ribbing fault that I haven’t conquered in my printer.

Doesn’t mean I’m giving up on FreeCAD forever, but at least for now I think I’ll stick with OpenSCAD.

OpenSCAD CheatSheet

Imported from Google+ — content and formatting may not be reliable