A great skill that will allow you to take your maker projects to the next level is 3D CAD design. Electronics projects are great, but to go beyond simple benchtop breadboard demonstrations, you need the ability to design and fabricate custom enclosures. Other projects are enabled if you can generate mechanical elements like gears, nuts, bolts, pistons and so forth. So, we offer design tutorials on two different CAD software packages. The first is sketchup, which can be downloaded for free. This is a simple CAD tool which is easy to learn. It is especially easy if you go through our tutorials.
The second tool we will teach is Fusion 360. I am not a lawyer, but the fusion 360 terms appear to be very generous, and appear to allow free use for students and home hobbiests. Google “Fusion 360 for education and home hobby use”.
You can find the tutorials below:
In addition to learning 3D CAD design, you will also want a 3D printer. below is a link to our favorite 3D printer.
This is the printer I use for these lessons. They also make a great entry level printer, which you can get HERE, which would also work great for these lessons.