Whether it is to design, modify or repair a 3D file yourself, there always comes a day when the lucky owner of a 3D printer wonders which 3D software to use. And because it is difficult to choose from the many existing programs, the Belgian firm i.Materialise today unveils a TOP 25 of the most popular design software in the world of 3D printing.
To arrive at this ranking, the i.Materialise teams based themselves on 6 distinct criteria, assigning a score from 0 to 100 to measure the popularity of the software. At first, they were interested in the general popularity of the software, by analyzing on the one hand the number of fans on social networks but also the notoriety of the software’s website (the page rank for connoisseurs as well as the number backlinks).
To refocus research on software really dedicated to 3D printing (and not to design in general), the study also takes into account the number of times the software has been mentioned on specialized platforms: dedicated forums to 3D printing like that of 3Dnatives, videos related to 3D printing on YouTube, 3D file platforms (like Cults3D, Thingiverse, CGTrader) and finally the number of times the software was mentioned on Google.
The ranking of the 25 most popular 3D printing modeling software according to i.Materialise:
We thus find in the top three free software with Blender and SketchUp, in 1st and 2nd place respectively. Third, we find the title SolidWorks from Dassault Systèmes, which however lacks a certain popularity within the 3D printing community (could this be related to its price? Its complexity?).
Although it does not in any way constitute a classification of the best 3D software, this TOP 25 has the advantage of giving some ideas for those who would like to try their hand at 3D modeling, because who says popular software means a large community and active to answer his questions.
Blender free software comes first in the ranking
More information on this classification on the i.Materialise website HERE
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