Autodesk 123D - Free 3D Design Software :)

[Dan Hintz]

A number of forums would likely appreciate this, but I'll post here and in The CNC forum only as they're the most likely to use it.

AutoDesk (makers of the famous AutoCAD, among others) offers a SketchUp-like alternative called Autodesk 123D... and you can download/use it for free.
http://www.123dapp.com/

They also include a bunch of free 3D models. I haven't tried it myself, but it is certainly worth a look-see.

[Ruben Salcedo]

Thank you, Dan,

perhaps this will be a good fit to this 3D printer? (http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-thing-o-matic.html)

[Joe De Medeiros]

while it's free right now, this is a beta program that expires.


Autodesk® 123D™ is a public beta because we're growing and developing, and we want your input! So please, post your ideas to the 123D product forum, we're interested in what you're thinking!

[Douglas J Miller]

I downloaded this last night and installed it on my two year old laptop. Not a blazing fast machine by any means, but not a slouch, either. Ran so slow I uninstalled it. Useless to me.

[Joe De Medeiros]

I downloaded this last night and installed it on my two year old laptop. Not a blazing fast machine by any means, but not a slouch, either. Ran so slow I uninstalled it. Useless to me.

A lot of autocad's products are tuned to Nvidia Quadro or ATI Fire-GL cards, also they tend to be memory pigs. The other problem is that they are not fully multi-core aware, so they benefit more from high clock rates.

[Mark Ross]

I run the full suite of Inventor 2012 including 3DS max. Big fat memory pig, leaking memory and slow loading on a quad core and I am running the new 64 bit editions. 3DS max, rendering single screen shots from Avatar on a bank of 1000 processors still took a long time. Not sure about their free software, but they are making the Inventor suite better and better. We got 3DS max and 5 other programs for free this year. Now if I can just convince them to throw in the injection molding die design software for free...

[Dan Hintz]

Mark,

I'm going to assume there's an extreme polygon count on an Avatar screen, hence the time to render... especially when Crysis renders in realtime at 60fps on a decent desktop. ;)

[Ruben Salcedo]

Have any of you tried the new feature in 123D Beta 7? check this video (http://youtu.be/94jvuDl-HBw) up


Ruben

[Ernie Balch]

That looks great, I'll have to give it a try.

ernie

[Eric Ucci]

123d make
123d catch
123d go
123d beta
Are all a
software design by another company and recently acquired by Autodesk. 123d Beta currently will not do all of the slicing or output print files the way 123d make will. Currently, 123d Make, however, is a fantastic piece of software that will allow you to take any water tight 3d stl object and slice it up for cutting. You can either make layers (topo map style) or make perpendicular cuts (egg crate style). You can adjust the number of slices. material thickness, axis of cutting planes, and the software will generate your print/cut file, and assembly instructions all instantaneously.
Unfortunately, 123d make only runs on Mac OS for the time being. Autodesk claims that it will have a PC version soon.
I saw this software demonstrated in a lab at the Autodesk conference last week. People were able to walk up to laptops, mess around with a 3d shape, and then output a print file. They were cutting out the parts from 1/8" cardboard on epilogue machines and people were sitting down at worktables assembling the parts. The 123d suite of products is nothing short of fantastic as far as I'm concerned. In fact, inspired me to look for a laser cutter.
One side note...
I have worked professionally for almost 15 yrs with Autodesk software (inventor for 10 yrs). There were times in the past when I was kicking myself for choosing and staying with Autodesk. However, I can say that the days of memory and performance problems have been over for a couple of yrs . Modern Icore processors, 64 bt OS and software, SSD harddrives, motherboards that support over 32 GB of Ram (and its all cheap too) have all combined to virtually eliminate the performance issued that hobbled parametric solid modelers in the past.
I don't mean to sound like a shill. Believe me, I could throw my complaints on the heap with the others. However, recent technology has got me truly excited about the possibilities.

[andrew zen]

As a software guy in the Silicon Valley, when an established company like Autodesk releases a software like this for free -- - - - it either is severely hindered or the market has passed them by and they are giving away something to get them in the market, or they are killing the market.. Since I haven't downloaded this software, but I bought drinks for the local autodesk guy, It is definitely one of reasons I described.