I still have no idea what I’m doing really. Just too determined to give up I guess, and it’s been such fun. Anyway I made a guitar pedal light switch cover. Still a lot of work to do, and every time I look at FreeCAD the wrong way, the model breaks, but it’s been a fun experience nonetheless.
On a side note, anybody have any idea why the face of the model is rough textured, while the foot switch on the lower half is flawless?
Blender is great for decorative/pretty stuff. CAD software is great for functional stuff as pointed out by others. It’s just so much easier to get accurate measurements and dimensions with CAD software compared to blender.
Yeah, Blender has two major limitations for mechanical-type parts:
One, it’s not parametric even with its CAD plugins, but whatever. If you’re only designing one part or a small assembly, you can manage without parameters, and the basic act of “make something” is often easier and more intuitive with a direct modeler.
Second, it’s editing meshes only. For 3D printing, that’s not really the end of the world, as Slicers only work with meshes anyway, but as you say it limits resolution and accuracy, and could mean you have a bad time if you wanted to get a better printer or leverage some other form of manufacturing. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s kind of like using Photoshop and only saving in JPG.