That brings us to an important aspect to consider about this app: It feels more suitable for concept work and visualization rather than physical manufacturing with 3D printing. Maybe it’s the way the interface is designed, but uMake naturally invites the creation of organic shapes, even though it’s not a sculpting tool, per se. You can literally project your supercar concept onto a live video view of your garage, to see if it will fit (next to your imaginary Porsche 911). It’s difficult to explain in words, you just have to try it yourself.Ī nice bonus of uMake is the ability to view your 3D designs in augmented reality. You mainly use 2D sketches to form 3D shapes, but the experience somehow feels more like 2D drawing with an added dimension variable instead of traditional parametric modeling with planes and sketches. This iconic app takes a unique approach to modeling because of its touch input.

The one app that always seems to make it onto a list about 3D design apps is uMake. They don’t need specialized apps to accommodate 3D design. Because, although Microsoft Surface devices are technically “tablets”, they run a desktop operating system and desktop software, which means they have full access to Solidworks, Fusion 360, and other extremely capable professional software. It’s also worth noting that we’re only listing apps made for mobile operating systems. As such, most of our selections are only available for iOS. Due to this popularity, and also the more suitable hardware of iOS devices, many developers target this platform with their apps.

Here’s the thing: As you can imagine, a tablet form factor is more suitable for 3D design than a tiny 6-inch phone screen, and the tablet landscape is dominated by iOS devices. In addition to that, we only selected apps that fit into a casual 3D printing workflow, with one noteworthy exception that has its own significant use case.

Things get even more complicated when you realize that most 3D design apps are targeted towards visualization or fun rather than designing 3D printable models.įortunately, we were able to find some of the best 3D design apps for mobile devices - apps that are actually worth their space on your home screen. A quick search will reveal that there are many mobile apps made for “3D design” out there, so you might have some trouble sifting through the whole pack to find one that’s reliable and functional.

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