I fully understand that feeling. Of course there’s nothing that says you won’t be able to start it up again at a later date. 3d printing is seeing a seismic shift right now with cheap and reliable multi-tool systems showing up, by the time the economy recovers, efficient, fast, multi-color, and multi-filament will be the norm. And with some of the more industrial plastics and even metals available through specialty printing services, I think we were already going to see a bloodbath amongst the smaller printing services out there no matter what. So maybe right now isn’t the worst time to dip out of the market anyway. I would suggest that you take this time to hone your design skills or focus on the more niche aspects of the market. You got the opportunity to learn and sample the market while money was gushing into it market, but it was a bubble that was never going to last. So, now you have the choice to take what you have learned and find something sustainable, or just run the other way and do something different.
I can personally tell you that having the market you are in ever so slowly shrink and die under you while you try to squeeze just a bit more out of its husk all the while feeling trapped because you have employees and customers depending on you… it’s fucking brutal. My family and I are doing well these days, but I can only imagine how much better I would have been doing if I had just called it quits much earlier.
FreeCAD is a great program for people who know cad. But it’s an awful place to start learning. I know first hand because that is what I tried to do too.
FreeCAD has 2 major issues.
The first is stability. As long as you do stuff the “right way”, it’s pretty stable, but FreeCAD is really powerful and has at least 5 different ways you can do anything, and as a beginner you will constantly find yourself going down rabbit holes that only lead to doom.
The second big issue is documentation. It suffers from both too much documentation and not enough at the same time. The program has seen a massive amount of development over the last several years. When you search for how to do something you will often find a dozen instructions and videos on how to do something, but they will all be for older versions of the program. However, due to the fast pace of developments and improvements to the program there will be nothing about how to do something in the program as a current stands and it will be just different enough that the old instructions don’t work anymore. I do strongly recommend that you download and install FreeCAD. There will definitely end up being things that you will want to try that can only be done in FreeCAD, but you really don’t want to start learning the basics there.
The other thing to know is that designing an object is only your first step. You then have to slice it and print it. Unfortunately, there is a fair amount to learn there too. Wall thickness, nozzle sizes, support structure, material strengths, ect. are going to require some learning of their own, so throwing FreeCAD on top of that is just cruel.
I strongly recommend starting with something insanely basic like tinkercad. It will limit what you can create to a certain extent, but you will be able to quickly produce some models that are not complete garbage, that won’t cause the slicer to commit seppuku, and that might actually print without causing your printer to shit itself, and have some success with right away.
Once you hit the limits of tinkercad you can then begin trying out the different CAD programs to see what makes the most sense to you. OnShape was the next step for me, but you should really just give them all a try to see what works for you.
Also, as a beginner, the online nature of many programs is actually a big advantage. Being able to switch from my work computer to my home computer instantly has been really nice. I even use the OnShape app on my phone occasionally. You’re not going to be doing any kind of complex development on the app, but it’s cool to be able to pull it up and do some basic stuff while you are stuck in a doctor’s office or at your in-laws for the holidays.
Plus, your initial designs are going to be hot garbage anyways, so it’s not like you have to worry about somebody stealing your ideas just because the free version makes your projects public.
When I got my first 3D printer I had tons of ideas that I wanted to turn into 3D prints. But it took me months to even get to the point where I could print out things of my own design that weren’t garbage.