I realize it would be redundant, that's not the point. I'm hoping for 3d modeling software that is free, and easy to start with. Maybe blender isn't the solution to that problem, but i've spent well over two years using blender, and i honestly have no idea what half of it does.
There are some helpful "blender for beginners" video tutorials, but not many, and i've looked.
In trying to advance open 3d printing, this is a huge barrier. Modeling software is the future, and if we want any independence from stratasys we'll need a powerful, easy to learn, modeling program. Otherwise we'll be overwelmed by proprietary software that only works with proprietary printers, e.g. makerware slicing program.
2 years and no progress? I think you are doing something wrong. I have been using Blender for a long while now and there are parts of it that I see every day and don't use or even know what it does. It's a generalist's package, it can be overwhelming but just focus on what you want and don't try to grasp every bit of it. A beginner's series I would recommend is http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-courses/blender-basics-intro... and some useful resources can be found here http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/a/43/12. I have a friend on fb that makes amazing 3d prints using Blender and a couple years ago he was fairly new to it, here's his blog, http://generativemodelingproject.blogspot.com/
I'm familiar with this course, the amount of time dedicated to modeling is not very large, but the overview of the controls is pretty decent.
The reason i'm not good at using blender is that when i hit a wall... it's a pretty insurmountable wall. It's much easier to just switch programs. If i need precision, openSCAD, if not, sketchup, both of which are obviously inferior.
The stack exchange post seems very useful, i'll look into that, thanks.
If you already understand the process of modelling, it's really nothing more than learning some keyboard shortcuts. I'd say that the modelling process itself - learning how a modeller thinks about the mesh and approaches various problems - took me far longer to learn than any particular quirks that Blender has.
There was a discussion recently about making Blender's UI "more friendly", which seemed to revolve mainly about coming up with a pretty icon for each operation and making left-click the select button. Pretty superficial stuff really.
I realize it would be redundant, that's not the point. I'm hoping for 3d modeling software that is free, and easy to start with. Maybe blender isn't the solution to that problem, but i've spent well over two years using blender, and i honestly have no idea what half of it does.
There are some helpful "blender for beginners" video tutorials, but not many, and i've looked.
In trying to advance open 3d printing, this is a huge barrier. Modeling software is the future, and if we want any independence from stratasys we'll need a powerful, easy to learn, modeling program. Otherwise we'll be overwelmed by proprietary software that only works with proprietary printers, e.g. makerware slicing program.