Resources
Every factual claim in this course traces to something here. If you find a source that contradicts a lesson, that is worth raising with your teaching agent — the lesson should change, or it should say why it disagrees.
Learn the software
Start here. The Onshape Learning Center is free with any account and is maintained by the people who ship the product.
- Onshape Learning Center
Onshape (PTC)
Self-paced course paths from first sketch through assemblies and drawings. The fundamentals path is a few hours and replaces a dozen scattered videos.
- Troubleshooting Sketch Constraints
Onshape Learning Center
Deliberately broken sketches for you to repair. The fastest route to actually understanding constraints rather than recognising their icons.
- Onshape Help
Onshape documentation
The reference. Short, exact pages per feature. Worth reading the one for any tool you use often — the options you never noticed are usually the useful ones.
- Tech Tip — Constraining Your Sketch
Onshape resource center
Five minutes on what constraints are for and how to find what is still loose in a sketch.
Design for printing
These are the sources behind every number on the design rules sheet. They disagree in places, which is deliberate reading — the disagreement is why you calibrate your own machine.
- How to design parts for FDM 3D printing
Protolabs Network (formerly Hubs)
The best single page on the subject. Overhangs, bridging, pin diameters, base chamfers, with the physical reason for each. Written by a service bureau printing at volume.
- Design Rules & Best Practices for FFF 3D Printing
Hydra Research
Rules expressed as multiples of extrusion width rather than absolutes, which is the more transferable way to hold them. Quotes tighter clearances than most.
- FDM Design Rules — wall thickness, overhangs, bridging, tolerances
Layer X
Where the 0.2–0.4 mm hole compensation and the 0.3 mm per-side clearance starting point in this course come from.
- Complete Guide to 3D Printing Tolerances and Fit
3DPut
The press, slip and free fit ranges, plus a sensible method for tuning interference in small steps.
- The 45-degree rule in 3D printing
Snapmaker
A longer treatment of the one rule you will apply most often, including when modern printers and good cooling let you exceed it.
Calibration you can print tonight
Model your own coupon if you want to practise variables. Download one of these if you just want the numbers today.
- Clearance Tolerance Test
Printables — 3DMakerNoob
Pegs and holes at labelled offsets. Print once, keep forever, retest whenever you change filament.
- Printer Tolerance Test
Printables — A_Str8
A long-standing community favourite covering more fit types in a single print.
People to ask
The last third of this skill is not readable. It comes from showing a failed part to someone who has printed a thousand of them.
- Onshape Forum
Onshape community
Unusually high signal, and Onshape staff answer here. Post a link to your public document and people will open it and tell you exactly what you did wrong — which is only possible because the free plan is public.
- r/functionalprint
Reddit
Parts that do a job rather than parts that look nice. Closest community to this course’s mission, and good for sanity-checking whether an idea should be printed at all.
- r/3Dprinting
Reddit
Large and general. Best for diagnosing a print that came out wrong when you cannot tell whether the cause is the model or the machine.
- r/cad
Reddit
Cross-package modelling technique. Useful when your question is about approach rather than about which button to press.