[ramboldio]

I think that is a fantastic insight that 'Making niche solutions is the point' with 3D printing.

Unfortunately, it is still very hard to _design_ niche solutions. The usability of CAD tools did not really improve at all in the last 20 years..

[Arcanum-XIII]

CAD is complicated, yes. But the biggest pain point is that engineering requires a lot of adjacent knowledge about material, tolerance, mechanical design, tooling, and so on. Making things requires patience.

CAD is the easy part.

[wat10000]

That really depends on what you're making. I've made a lot of things that are basically, I want an object with this shape, model that shape, print that shape, success. For things where tolerances and material properties matter, a little trial and error takes care of a lot of it.

There's an engineering saying that anybody can design a bridge that won't fall down, but it takes an engineer to design a bridge that just barely won't fall down. Why do you want a bridge that just barely won't fall down? Because it's a lot cheaper to build. That's not much of a concern when you're printing little doodads at home. I waste some material by designing overly-strong structures, or getting it wrong and iterating. That's fine, the stuff is cheap.

[hodder]

...which is a niche problem looking for a niche solution.