[Florin_Andrei]

Is Blender close enough to a 3D CAD app that I could use it to build my models for 3D printing?

I've used SketchUp a lot, but it has many limitations. Other 3D modelers are either proprietary, or don't seem to provide enough automation to justify moving away from SketchUp.

[qmoto0]

I have used blender for some 3d printing projects. Shapeways has several articles describing the process and highlighting some of the issues (eg https://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/prepping_blender_files_f...).

However, while I think it's very good for animation/rendering purposes, it is missing a lot of things you might expect in a full CAD app. I use it to build meshes and then describe how to deform it. It has some procedural constraints. I recall it has some snapping behavior, and googling around shows some plugins that try to add some of this missing CAD functionality, but I can't really judge their success.

Maybe see also - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53293/is-blender...

[naikrovek]

Yes. It is a fully capable 3D authoring tool.

[Florin_Andrei]

Would you use it for your 3D print projects? (assuming you did any 3D printing)

[cr0sh]

I've personally considered it. If you're more of a visual modeller person, it very well might be ideal.

If you're a programmer, however, consider looking into OpenSCAD or OpenJSCAD:

http://www.openscad.org/

https://openjscad.org/

Not only are they more programmer friendly, but making parametric models should be much easier as a side-effect.

[Doxin]

I do use it for 3d printing projects. It's far from ideal, and doing anything precise in blender means having to learn your way around the various snap tools and the like. But it does work, and work nicely once you learn how to.

That said: you should probably learn some other programs too. Personally I use openscad and solvespace too depending on the use case.