Use it for what is was designed for: making nice images of buildings.)

SketchUp was ment to create 'cardboard' 3D-images of architectural buildings for Google Earth, before Google had its own program to automatically convert aerial photos into 3D-models. (This is contrary to SketchUp, which always causes huge trouble when 3D-printing, since it was never intended for that. In 2 years time, and after hundreds of models, I never had any problem printing its STL-files.

But it creates very good, solid STL-files for 3D-printing. It has its own fileformat 'RSDOC', and it can export to STL and OBJ for 3D-printing, and JPG for images of the model (these are basically screendumps of the current drawing window).ĭSM can also read STEP-files, but can not export it, unless you buy the optional IGES/STEP import/export add-on.ĭSM is very easy to learn: it has a similar simple push-pull user-interface like SketchUp. It is not suitable for organic shapes like animals, plants, etc. It only requires registration to activate it.ĭesignSpark Mechanical is very well suited for geometric shapes, technical models and machine parts, like the one you can see in this screendump. It is a limited version of the commercial SpaceClaim program, and distributed for free by the well-known elektronics supplier 'RS Components'. Manual: how to install DesignSpark Mechanical in VirtualBoxĭesignSpark Mechanical ('DSM') is freeware 3D-editor.

Designspark mechanical for mac