Enclosure Design Resources

Design Tools for Enclosures:

  • FreeCAD (free cost, not cloud, open source) - powerful but lacks UI polish of many paid-for/closed CAD packages. Very much worth persevering with IMHO. Includes tools for CAM and CFD, with python scripting interface for customisation if you want.
  • OpenSCAD (free cost, not cloud, open source) - sometimes preferred for parametrics and those more comfortable with programming than CAD.
  • Alibre CAD (paid-for, not cloud, closed source). One of the more popular options when Fusion 360 and Onshape’s licence tweaks get too much to bear for people.
  • Fusion 360 (free for many, cloud-based, closed source)
  • Onshape (free for many, cloud-based, closed source)

Other useful links:

  • To start with, I’ll just leave this link to the enclosure tag on Hackaday.com where there is a wide range of examples featured.
  • Here’s a NASA resource on electrical isolation and chassis grounding.

Computer Aided Machining (CAM) Tools

  • As mentioned, FreeCAD has the Path workbench for CAM.
  • laser.cut is a cool looking openSCAD plugin that can handle other subtractive processes such as CNC routing.
  • I don’t plan to list every slicer out there for 3D printers but kiri:moto stands out for running solely in your browser (but on your local machine - it’s definitely not cloud) and supporting fdm, laser and cnc routers.

Design Tips

  • For air flow, whether forced (by e.g. a fan) or natural ventilation is always improved by larger slots/holes. Realistically, when you don’t want screws/fingers etc getting into an enclosure you need too keep sizes down. @kvk recommends going no smaller than 1mm slot width. But go bigger if you can and you have heat to deal with!
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