N3XD

3D printers usually come in handy when working on DIY projects or printing all sorts of household items. Naturally, CAD software is required to design the STL files to feed these machines alongside some filament.

After using Autodesk Fusion360/Inventor for many years I was recently forced to search for alternatives as I'm nearing the end of my PHD and thus the student access becomes invalid. While alternatives exists, they are either forcing the user to have all their projects publically visible or still cost a significant amount of money a year which usually eats up all the benefits you gain with having a 3D printer at home. Existing open-source software is usually far behind the user experience and reliability of proprietary software.

So I decided to built my own CAD software; how hard could it be? The project actually started already three years ago (when AI tools for coding weren't available yet). Back then I've tried to use Panda3D as engine and got it to a level where I was able to sketch simple forms and have a neat GUI to play around. But the project stalled because of lack of time and experience to develop it further.

But times have changed! Claude and other tools essentially dissolved the hardness in writing code (despite all the caveats these tools bring as well). So I gave the project another chance. This time I tried a hybrid approach with a dedicated backend to handle the compute and a browser based frontend to allow more flexible and modern UI/UX development.

The result is currently available at n3xd.io. Feel free to check it out and play around with it. I'm happy for any feedback (there is a dedicated feedback form available after login). Only a mail address is required for sign-up and it's totally freely available. Once the codebase becomes more stable, I'm planning to release the code while having a cloud-hosted instance for paid access available as well.