Since I’m fundamentally cheap and have an unreasonable phobia regarding Microsoft products over the years I’ve been attempting to find the best tool for my 3D modeling restricted  to the open source community. So, here is what I’ve found, as far as machine operating systems go I finally settled Ubuntu, its simple to use and more then covers my needs. CAD software is a lot more challenging, I’ve started to become convinced that software companies are using the Microsoft platform as a way to enhance there licensing enforcement. Lets face it, if the software only runs on Windows then it much more likely the end user will pay for it since they already payed for the operating system and if it was pirated they can ride right along with the Microsoft’s legal team. So anyway my final tool box ends up being OpenSCad for most models. I thought I’d hate the command line driven tool but with a plug-in from Notepad++ it ends up being easy to use and very strait forward, it’s no wonder it’s the top file type format you see when going to Thingiverse. If I’m looking to really build something complex with a lot of moving parts I use FreeCad and yes, I know it use to suck but the last few releases have really cleaned things up. Last but not least for “Art” I use Blender and honestly it’s not all that often I feel the need to go down the Blender path. Blender is great but for 3D printing models it clunky and time consuming. Last but not least I have two favorite slicers. Number one for single extruder prints and dual extruder prints for support I’ve found KISSlicer is the way to go, I know the web site doesn’t look like much, but the slicer is free and trust me you will not be disappointed. Things get a little more complicated for dual extruder printing when your not using one of the extruders for support, If thats the model type I’m working with I use Slic3r.

OK, thats all my rambling for the moment, if you have any other solutions that are Linux based and free of cost let me know.