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Blender is a contender for the best go-to example in the history of open-source software. It's easy for any layperson to understand what it is (unlike, say, Linux), and it's genuinely better than the for-profit competition in a lot of aspects. There's nothing else like it.
It's been growing for decades, and its community is the best.
I'm really not in that space so I only get to watch from the sidelines, but I've always been in awe of Blender.
Fuuuck, gotta try to learn it again. I grew up on 3dsMax which was like the king of 3D in video game dev, and blender is/was just so different. Must be some simple tutos out there now how to make millimeter precise stuff & boolean operations on volumes for my 3D printing...
The good thing with open source is they can't just screw you over with new workflows or other (looking at you Unity, degrading float point resolution after 2.6).
Sounds like you need CAD software instead of 3D modeling software. Very different!
FreeCAD exists and is FOSS but IMO is not very user-friendly. Then again I never seriously tried using it or watching tutorials or anything, so this might be unfair. Give it a shot I suppose!
The few times I needed to design something in CAD, I had success with Fusion 360. It's easy to use and gets the job done, but it's kinda gross with its confusing (mandatory?) cloud integration.
You can ask in 3D printing circles what CAD software people use and recommend, they'll certainly know better than me! If you're up for giving FreeCAD a shot, I'll be happy to hear your experience with it. I'd really like to know if it's better than I give it credit for.
Edit: seems like a lot has changed since I last checked out FreeCAD. Version 1.0 was released and I'm sure it's better since I tried it. So forget what I said, it's probably good!
Thanks, but I have already tried out freecad and also that fusion 360 IIRC it was very nice on paper, making planes everywhere :-), but as you say very different from what I know! I just need to use basic shapes, say extract a spline, and combine/cut with boolean operators, and then fine tune the mesh and its vertices itself, well it is how I have always done it, not engineer worthy but it works for me...