3D modeling / printing software stack - looking for suggestions

General system Applications
1

I’ve recently revived my 3D printer as I would need some parts.

In short, during the pandemic I’ve kept myself busy with building a Voron V0 printer, which I’ve managed to complete by myself. But at some point I put that hobby to a hold and put it in storage as soon as the social restrictions were lifted and life went to normal, more or less.

Back then I was using primarily SuperSlicer for the GCOde generation and did modelling of my own stuff via Fusion 360 - but I wasn’t on linux at that point of time, but somewhere in between MacOS X and Windows 10.

So, in the last days I’ve got my principle software stack up and running. But I’ld appreciate to read what’s commonly being in use on the linux side of things, especially in terms of actual useful software which would allow me to not go into the rabbit hole of setting up Fusion 360 via VM or WINE. Or to use solely cloud-based services such as OnShape. Sure, I know of FreeCAD as well as OpenSCAD. But I’m essentially looking a program in between a feature-rich and complex user interface which would take some effort to learn to master parametric modeling (FreeCAD) and a low-level parametric modelling via markup language (OpenSCAD), which would take some effort to learn & master as well.

In short, an application that would allow me just to grab a stl / 3mf file to manipulate / modify without a proprietary license.

As well would say in the German language: Eine Eierlegende Wollmilchsau, bitte. (An egg-laying woolly pig that would give you milk as well; a jack of all trades, more or less.) The swiss army knife for those who are leaning towards engineering side of thinks, rather than pure non-functional 3D printing for decorative purposes.

2

I’m not really a 3D-CAD guru myself. I picked up a very cheap entry-level printer mainly to experiment and learn.

For CAD I personally like OnShape a lot. For me it’s pretty much the ideal CAD system: free to start with, very powerful, and well suited for parametric / engineering-style work without dealing with proprietary desktop installs.

For slicing I use Cura and I’m very happy with it so far.

That setup works well for my needs without going too deep into the CAD rabbit hole.

3

Well, I went a bit too far into that rabbit hole when I tackled self-sourcing the components and getting the printer up & running back then.

But I’ll need to work with some assemblies in step format which are ~100 - 200mb. That might work with OnShape, but I would prefer my software crashing locally :wink: I didn’t like the aspect of sharing all the files I would be working on within the OnShape community.