Like where is a good place to buy stl files online, so far ive only printed free files but i think i want to try those neat paid ones, im just not sure where to buy stl files from?
I mostly like useful prints like tools or anything that can help in day to day living.
What site would you suggest i checkout and why so?
If your interest is in useful prints, I would highly recommend learning FreeCAD and just making your own to solve your own problems.
Nothing beats the feeling of trying to do something, wishing some tool exists to simplify the process, visualizing what that tool would look like in your own head, designing it yourself, and then watching it (a thing that, as far as you know, has never existed before) get printed into existence for the first time ever.
…
And then realizing that your design has some flaws and iterating over multiple versions as you make improvements. 😉
There are lots of excellent FreeCAD tutorial videos online targeting 3D printing.
How does freecad compare to tinkercad, i heard tinkercad is more for newcomers?
TinkerCAD is ok for simple shapes and basic functional parts. It works by adding or subtracting simple shapes together (cubes, cylinders etc) to make more complex shapes. It’s quick, easy and instinctive but anything slightly more complex than a dozen shapes grouped together and/or iterative designs quickly become a time consuming nightmare. It’s like trying to format a magazine in Word.
FreeCAD (or Fusion, OnShape, SolidWorks or any “serious” CAD software) use a parametric workflow. You start with a technical drawing by setting shapes, dimensions, angles and relationships (“constraints”), extrude or revolve this shape to create a solid, then continue by drawing another sketch on a face and adding more constraints, extruding this sketch, then… you get it. It has a much steeper learning curve, but once understood it’s much quicker and easier to build very complex shapes. Plus iterative designs are usually a breeze since everything is constrained together, so changing any dimension or angle in any sketch means the whole design will follow. It’s also trivial to add chamfers, filets, working with mirror and central symmetry etc. When designing functional parts, parametric design is the proper tool for the job.
They are vastly different, in tinkercad you mkstly operate with 3d primitives to make your model end result being an stl file. Freecad supports this workflow as well but their main loop is completely different, you draw your part in one dimension, then extrude it, then draw details in other dimensions and do operations on them, in the end you ideally get an model that can be easily modifable in every step. You can change for example hole diameter in your drawing and it will automatically propagate into model.