I want to create a 3D model of a vex robot, but I do not know which software to use. What software works best for this?
and also, it would help if it is free
What OS are you using?
Try Autodesk Fusion 360, they have a free trial and I believe it is free to students as well.
I use Onshape . It’s cloud and browser based, so no downloads necessary and it’s cross platform, so you can even use your phone to build robots. It’s also completely free unless you need many or extremely large files. It also has plugins which allow for simulation and rendering from right within Onshape, most of which have a free trial period. 2114A also compiled a part library of most vex parts which can be found here. Here is an example of what the UI looks like which modeling (early version of last year’s robot): http://i.imgur.com/Vtxff1P.png
Autodesk inventor is my favorite. Besides, there is the most material and tutorials available for inventor SPECIFICALLY for vex parts. Every parts library I’ve come across uses ipt files.
You think more than 100MB is extremely large? Are you kidding me? You couldn’t build a clawbot in 100MB.
100MB is only for private storage, you get 5GB of total storage. Also, I guess it links models between files because the public part library that I linked to is 770MB, but when I copy it over to my private files and build a robot in it, it takes up much less space (25-80MB)
@sazrocks I do like the idea of onshape but unfortunately for me, I’ve already started building in inventor. I’ve seen some possibilities to transfer my project to onshape by uploading my project, but my project size is over 3 GB. This would require me to purchase additional storage. Do you know of any way for me to transfer my project for free?
When you upload a file, you are asked if you want the file to be public or private. If you choose public, you should be able to import it. I’m not sure how assemblies will be handled though because I don’t personally use inventor, but if you run into trouble with that kind of thing, try different file types that are on this list.
Autodesk inventor professional is pretty good. You can get it for free too from a student download and the 2017 version (comparing it to 2014) has a fairly easy-to-use layout once you get the hang of it. The big downside is that it requires almost 8 gigabytes to download, which, if you’re running it on a family computer (or something that doesn’t have much memory left) could get kinda hard to work around.