Visuals in 3D!

Even as an hobbyist you can now use free tools to create and test hardware enclosings without bending metal or sawing wood and risk fingers, or hurt yourself with a screwdriver.

3D

For a developer OpenSCAD might be a perfect 3D tool, because you create your model by logical operations using a programming language instead of fighting with an 3D mouse driven UI. You can easily import and use plenty of free 3D models from GrabCad to create your product. Sample?

Just search for LCD 2004 and chose a model of your choice supporting STEP or STL. OpenSCAD supports STP, for STEP a little conversion step is required, for example.

Lets assume we found a 3D model on GrabCad:

We can import it to OpenSCAD by: