Drawing the Same Mold Using Fusion 360 and OnShape

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More coming soon. I am super excited by the prospect of using OnShape 3D CAD that is free for hobby makers (vs. $750/year I having been paying for Fusion 360).

I am attached to Fusion 360, it is very hard to let it go. But its $700/year fee is powerful motivation! OnShape is amazing. There is nothing to install on my PC, it runs in a browser window. How is this even possible? My expectations of how it should function are a product of experience with Fusion 360, it is a pleasant surprise that they are generally being met. The type of mold making I do are only a fraction of what this OnShape can do so there is little danger of encountering any limitations. Recent experience with the complexity and slowness of Solidworks for Makers, which is total overkill for what I need, really makes OnShape look good.

My OnShape drawings are stored in my cloud accout and are public. That sounded bad a first, but it also means that they are shareable with others (another person, whom I choose, can actually work on a drawing at the same time as me). It is working in Firefox on my Mac and on my Ubuntu Linux machine (the latter of which is beyond exciting to me!). Of course it will also work in Safari and Chrome on other computers. A real bonus: I can edit drawings on iPad in what appears to be full power mode (a mouse and keyboard are needed). This is the Google Docs of CAD! I am ecstatic.

Besides the above, here are some of the features and advantages I am seeing:
-It opens and saves many professional CAD file types (a major drawback of the restrictions in SolidWorks for Makers).
-It is really fast, login is quick and a drawing can be open in seconds, this is way better than xDesign for Makers (from Solidworks).
-Documents are always saved, you close one by simply clicking the home icon on the upper left.
-The time line (called the "feature tree") can be reordered, turned back and has folders like Fusion 360 (but it is easier to use in some ways).
-To 3D print a body just select it, right-click and choose to export it in 3MF or STL format, it goes into the downloads folder where it can be opened by my slicer (e.g. Prusa Slicer or Simplify 3D).
-The 3D tools and sketching tools all show across the top (depending on mode), they are not buried in menus and environments like Fusion 360. There are no separate environments.
-Like Fusion 360, sketching constraints are inferred as sketches are created and applying them works in a similar fashion (although I am still looking for the equivalent of the co-linear one). Their tiny symbols display in groups and associate to the point or line by a light grey line, they are even movable.
-Section analysis is in the "Camera and Render Options" popup under the view cube.
-The spline sketching tool works better.

Links

URLs	https://www.onshape.com OnShape parametric cloud-native CAD software

3D Printed Pour Spout Forms a Rounded Lip

A major problem with slipcasting potentially solved

This picture has its own page with more detail, click here to see it.

This 3D-printed PLA pour spout potentially increases the utility of this one-piece plaster mold. As can be seen on the upper section analysis, the spout is designed to form the lip of this small Medalta Potteries bowl (and provide a guide for cutting its inside edge). It has lugs that extend outward to enable holding it down using rubber bands. I intend that it will be cleanly removable after the piece begins to pull away from the mold, leaving a high-quality lip that only needs a little trimming. This spout also permits precise monitoring of when to pour out the slip and it prevents most of the mess made using traditional molds having a spare.

This is the first piece I have made wholly using OnShape CAD. I did not read any instruction manual, my experience with Fusion 360 gives me expectations of how this should work and those expectations are generally being met. The economy expectations are being far exceeded: I am using OnShape on my 2014 Mac Mini running Ubuntu Linux (on 16gb RAM). Prusa Slicer, OctoPrint, GIMP 3 photo editor, Kdenlive video producer, InkScape vector drawing editor and productivity software are all running smoothly and fast on this machine. Cost is no longer an obstacle to adopting 3D CAD for mold making.

3D mechanical design software 2025:

Which is the best for mold making in ceramics?

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CAD software and 3D printing are a potential revolution in vessel mold-making for ceramics (3D modelling is another topic). But there are two big problems: There is no way a potter, hobbyist or even small manufacturer can afford the typical software cost. While it is true most have free or low-cost trial or hobby versions, the strings attached are deal breakers. The second problem is the complexity of learning - that can be a bigger obstacle than cost. Until the recent price increase, Fusion 360 seemed to be exactly what was needed. A great way to on-board the CAD world, using the free version and its great learning resources and best-in-class user interface. It is new and modern, a YouTube star. It is fully parametric supporting constraints and a timeline. True, it can choke on more complex drawings on consumer computers, but we don’t need to do those. But, for commercial use, it costs $680/yr. But that is cheap compared to some others! Upon discovery of the capability, the cost might be doable for you. Here are the ones you likely cannot afford (and maybe don't want): -OnShape runs in your browser, in our testing it looks really good. Free-version drawings are public (but no other restrictions). Going private costs $1500/yr! -Rhino is usable for CAD but is polygonal and targeted at modelling. It is not fully parametric and does not have a traditional timeline (however Rhino+Grasshopper is life-changing for geeks, both for CAD and modelling). $1000 to buy but upgrading is $500+. -Solidworks is a long-time proven product, it is fully parametric with editable history. Runs on Windows only (or the xDesign product runs in a browser like OnShape). It is low cost for hobby use (but the restriction of not being able to save or open the commercial SolidWorks file format is a potential deal-breaker for hobbyists). For commercial use: $2600/yr in 2025. Some upcoming possibilities: -FreeCAD is becoming more viable. It is parametric, has constraints and exports and imports popular formats (but with lots of issues). Its model tree is equivalent to the Fusion 360 timeline, but more clunky and depends on careful setting of constraints. The learning curve right now puts it out of practical reach of most. But a capital injection, like Blender got, is coming. -Shapr 3D costs $299/yr, also works on iPad (which Fusion 360 does not), and uses the Parasolid engine like OnShape and SolidWorks. But it seems to be targeted at being intuitive for conceptual modeling and quick prototyping for drawings that are finalized in other products (limited support for accurate feature placement, constraints, parametrics and boolean operations).

By Tony Hansen
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