Anyone out there teach me Corel Draw and digital printing skills?

[Micol]

Consultant/Teacher needed (pay negotiable).....Maybe corel is not the best platform to design plastic things. What is? What is the best printer and substrates to work with? What maggot in Denver or wherever if you can teach face to face or remotely ? I have used a form of cad type software years back. but its been a while. so near noob but note totally.

[burrito]

What are you trying to make? It sounds like you're trying to print dimensional plastic parts, for which you'll need 3D modeling software. Lots of good options out there with non-terrible learning curves. Happy to provide some recommendations if I know more about what you're trying to create.

[Micol]

^ yes exactly, 3d plastic parts (abs, rubber , etc) creating one off samples of hardware to test to be eventually be scaled up for production to be used with my outdoor products
thanks any help appreciated

[adrenalated]

Corel Draw is absolutely not the correct software package for you then. You need 3D modeling software.

Autodesk Fusion 360 is reasonably user friendly and offers a free license for personal use. Technically your use wouldn't qualify but I doubt they'd come after you. I'm not real familiar with the other cheap/free options as I have access to Solidworks.

3D printing is the technology you want, and any 3D printer will be able to make prototype parts. I personally have a Prusa i3 and it works well. Standard cheap PLA material would be fine for most fit-check prototyping purposes. PETG makes a good material for functional prototypes (such as parts that you'd make from ABS in production) and the Prusa can print some flexible filaments as well, although those get a lot more tricky.

[Micol]

Corel Draw is absolutely not the correct software package for you then. You need 3D modeling software.

Autodesk Fusion 360 is reasonably user friendly and offers a free license for personal use. Technically your use wouldn't qualify but I doubt they'd come after you. I'm not real familiar with the other cheap/free options as I have access to Solidworks.

3D printing is the technology you want, and any 3D printer will be able to make prototype parts. I personally have a Prusa i3 and it works well. Standard cheap PLA material would be fine for most fit-check prototyping purposes. PETG makes a good material for functional prototypes (such as parts that you'd make from ABS in production) and the Prusa can print some flexible filaments as well, although those get a lot more tricky.

awesome 411 ! thank you!


pc or mac for this stuff?

do you need a mouse?

what else beside printer?

[RShea]

Consultant/Teacher needed (pay negotiable).....Maybe corel is not the best platform to design plastic things. What is? What is the best printer and substrates to work with? What maggot in Denver or wherever if you can teach face to face or remotely ? I have used a form of cad type software years back. but its been a while. so near noob but note totally.

What type of plastic things? You doing 1 off 3D printing type of stuff? What are your tolerances needed? What type of file format are you going to need are where you start and go from there. While Corel Draw is good for things like T-Shirt and printing type of graphics, It is really not a full 3D printing and mold design type of package in really.

For plastic mold design you are looking at a good 3D package usually and those packages are not cheap. Some try and start with AutoCad or other entry level Cad packages like Corel Cad, TurboCad and the like, but those that do this with needs for tight tolerances and specifications use packages for injection mold design and tool and die use like MasterCam, MoldFlow, Cimatron, SolidWorks, Tebis, Pro E (PTC package) and the like.

Start here if you are going to pursue Corel offerings: https://www.coreldraw.com/en/pages/3d-printing/

[RShea]

awesome 411 ! thank you!


pc or mac for this stuff?

do you need a mouse?

what else beside printer?

Most businesses use either PC's - higher end workstations with expensive video cards in them that are approved by the software companies, or some even go Linux or in past years Unix OS workstations. Not many Mac shops that I have worked with (and Tool and Die and the plastics industry has some of the top companies in my area).

Mouse would be a possible only for basic stuff. Some do track balls (popular one out there is 3DConnexion Spaceball and Spacemouse, there are some others. Or graphics digitizing tablets even. As for what else besides a printer (assume you are talking about some sort of a 3D printer out there now?) then the sky is the limit- plotters are sometimes helpful (depending on how often and if there is some sort of printing or graphics company in your area that can do large prints for you of the designed parts on paper. ) Then you may get into needing Cam software or conversion software to output to other file formats....

[adrenalated]

awesome 411 ! thank you!


pc or mac for this stuff?

do you need a mouse?

what else beside printer?

PC. Most 3D modeling software isn't available for Macs.

Yes you need a mouse. Doing this stuff on a touchpad would suck.

RShea is right about the professional stuff but for the basic kind of prototyping work that you are doing you don't need a Spacemouse or a professional workstation or professional grade software. A basic 3D modeling program, a simple bluetooth mouse, any PC, and a desktop 3D printer will get the job done. Your software needs to output to .stl or .obj for most 3D printers. Export to .x_t or .stp for most production shops. You probably don't need a CAM package for that. You can always upgrade later if/when you find the limitations of such equipment.

(This is coming from someone that designs for manufacturing on a workstation PC with a huge monitor and a Spacemouse and Solidworks Professional every day)

[Micol]

thanks both you guys, yeah this would be for mock ups and field testing things so i can quickly retool. once its time for production, i would go to a pro and let them lay it all out for manufacturing a finished product....


ps just ordered "3d printing for dummies" hope thats not a complete waist of $18

im not making jet fuel nozzles or human heart parts ....more basic parts like custom zipper pull extension molded pieces .....etc etc

[::: :::]

rhino 3d is relatively cheap (& not subscription based fees), as far as fully functional 3d software goes, and it doesn't live on the web

fusion, like sketchup (free version), is cloud based
that can be a pain depending on complexity of models

[Micol]

thanks i will check those out

[burrito]

I'm a designer that's being using 3D modeling and printing professionally for over a decade. For what you're talking about, and considering you're just starting out, I'd recommend the following - all of which basically boils down to "start small and build slowly based on your needs":

PC - Very few 3D surface/solid modeling programs out there run well on Mac. This isn't because Macs aren't capable. The software just isn't written for them. It's either non-existent or ported from a PC version. Even Rhino, which has a really good Mac version, runs much better and is much more capable on PC. I use a Mac for everything else, but when I have the option I always use a PC for 3D. Your rig doesn't need to be overly powerful unless you get into parametric modeling or rendering. Even a mid-range gaming PC will do just fine starting out.

Software - Fusion360 is the most robust freeware I've seen, though I don't have a ton of experience with it personally. It has supposedly decent surface, solid, parametric, and polygon subdivision modeling (read up on the differences - there's too much info to go into here) all in the same program. Cloud-based stuff can be annoying, but it's where I'd start if I had no experience and/or didn't have any budget for software.

Personally I exclusively design in Rhino and Solidworks. Rhino is mostly surface modeling, has a relatively intuitive workflow, adds some parametric capabilities through plugins, and is cheap relative to the rest of the field (especially if you can qualify for their student pricing.) All of the designers I work with use Rhino. If you have the budget to pay for software, start with Rhino. Solidworks is robust (all of our engineers use it for final production 3D), but it's prohibitively expensive. If my work didn't pay for it I wouldn't use it.

Peripherals - Just get a decent 3-button mouse. Yeah you can go nuts with trackballs and the like, but 99.9% of what anyone needs to do is perfectly easily learned and accomplished with a standard mouse. The other stuff just helps the work go faster once you know what you're doing.

3D Printer - Read up on the different types (FDM, SLS, etc.) and materials (PLA, resin, etc.), start cheap, and level up when the cheap printer becomes a hindrance. I've also had good experiences with 3rd-party print shops like 3D Hubs (hubs.com) if you don't want to invest in a printer right away.

Regardless of which ways you go, good luck and have fun. 3D modeling and printing is definitely some type-2 fun once you get the hang of it.

[Micol]

I'm a designer that's being using 3D modeling and printing professionally for over a decade. For what you're talking about, and considering you're just starting out, I'd recommend the following - all of which basically boils down to "start small and build slowly based on your needs":

PC - Very few 3D surface/solid modeling programs out there run well on Mac. This isn't because Macs aren't capable. The software just isn't written for them. It's either non-existent or ported from a PC version. Even Rhino, which has a really good Mac version, runs much better and is much more capable on PC. I use a Mac for everything else, but when I have the option I always use a PC for 3D. Your rig doesn't need to be overly powerful unless you get into parametric modeling or rendering. Even a mid-range gaming PC will do just fine starting out.

Software - Fusion360 is the most robust freeware I've seen, though I don't have a ton of experience with it personally. It has supposedly decent surface, solid, parametric, and polygon subdivision modeling (read up on the differences - there's too much info to go into here) all in the same program. Cloud-based stuff can be annoying, but it's where I'd start if I had no experience and/or didn't have any budget for software.

Personally I exclusively design in Rhino and Solidworks. Rhino is mostly surface modeling, has a relatively intuitive workflow, adds some parametric capabilities through plugins, and is cheap relative to the rest of the field (especially if you can qualify for their student pricing.) All of the designers I work with use Rhino. If you have the budget to pay for software, start with Rhino. Solidworks is robust (all of our engineers use it for final production 3D), but it's prohibitively expensive. If my work didn't pay for it I wouldn't use it.

Peripherals - Just get a decent 3-button mouse. Yeah you can go nuts with trackballs and the like, but 99.9% of what anyone needs to do is perfectly easily learned and accomplished with a standard mouse. The other stuff just helps the work go faster once you know what you're doing.

3D Printer - Read up on the different types (FDM, SLS, etc.) and materials (PLA, resin, etc.), start cheap, and level up when the cheap printer becomes a hindrance. I've also had good experiences with 3rd-party print shops like 3D Hubs (hubs.com) if you don't want to invest in a printer right away.

Regardless of which ways you go, good luck and have fun. 3D modeling and printing is definitely some type-2 fun once you get the hang of it.

great 411 ! much appreciated going to study everything presented in thread over the next few days ! thank you all