Software Tools

Having a repertoire of tools is essential for making and designing. What I would recommend for any starting out:

  • Arduino for physical prototyping.

  • P5JS for interactive programming.

  • Atom.io for a text based code editor.

  • Inkscape for vector based design.

  • Audacity for audio edit and conversion.

  • Gimp for advanced photoediting.

  • Snapseed (android & ios) for basic image correction.

  • iMovie (if on a mac) for Movie editing.

  • TinkerCad for basic 3D modelling.

  • Slack or discord for online collaboration.

  • Google drive (+ docs and slides) for organizing your code, files, documentation and presentations.

You can find the links below.

My personal gearbag is the following: Snapseed for quick photo manipulation. Affinity Designer for vector drawing and Final Cut Pro X for movie editing, Arduino for physical prototyping and P5JS for visual programming. Google drive for files and office tools like slides, docs and sheets.

Blow is a curated list of software tools that can be used for design, prototyping and documenting. We are often forced to into commercial products wrapped in student licences and short term triels. With this list I try to provide free or even "open source" alternatives. I hope this page can help you find yours.

See also https://fablab.ruc.dk/essential-tools-for-prototyping/ for a longer list og good tools.

Audio editing

Audacity

Ugly graphical userinterface but a swiss army knife for basic sound file converseion.

$$

Ableton Live

Amacing live music production tool.


https://www.reaper.fm/


PCB Design

Fritzing

Open source tool for macing PCB diagrams. Good for makers because it has all the Arduino components. They have made a 8$ dollar fee on the download link. You should consider donating, but you can also find it here:

https://github.com/fritzing/fritzing-app/releases

Tinkercad circuits

Is also easy to use.

Kicad

Open source and market leader.

$$

Easyeda

Free with advertisements.




Vector Drawing

Inkscape

Good and well developed open source version. Use the latest beta version.

$$

Adobe illustrator

Market leader, but subscription based.

Affinity designer

One time cost - good alternative, but a bit tricky with export for laser cutting

Corel Draw

One time cost - good alternative.

Gravit Designer

Subscription based with a free alternative.

Deep nest

Deep nest is vector placement utility that places your objects as close as possible on your plate so you do not waste materials when cutting.



Movie editing

Open source:

https://www.shotcutapp.com/


Imovie is a good free alternative for Mac users.

And Davinci Resolve is market leaders of movie editors and free for Windows and Mac

Further, Final Cut X is my preferred tool.

https://filmora.wondershare.net/


3D Modelling

Tinkercad

Simpe and easy to use.

Blender

Open source and versatile

Makercase

Online 3D box making for lasercutting

OpenJSCad

Javascript programmable 3D modelling system.

FreeCad

Wings3D

$$$Freemium

Fusion360

Impressive all-round system for 3D modelling and manufacturing.

Rhino3D

Sculptris

https://www.matterhackers.com/store/l/mattercontrol/sk/MKZGTDW6

Photoediting

Gimp

Good open source image editor.

Snapseed

Android and Iphone based photo correction tool. Really good for basic correction.

Paint.net

Good open source photo editor for windows.

$$

Affinity Photo

Affinity photo editor.


Other apps:

  • Darktable,

  • Rawtherapee,

  • photoscape x(on mac)

  • photos app on Mac

  • Fotor.

  • Photoscape

Code editors

They are all good.

Atom IO

Visual studio code

Text Mate (Mac)

Brackets IO

Only for html/css/js editing, but amazingly simple

Sublime Text

Free to use, but license required with longer use.


Creative programming frameworks

Programming framework for creeative programming.

Processing

Simple and fast interface for programming. Based on Java language.

P5JS

Online editor based on javascript.

Open Frameworks

Fast visual engine in C++

Cinder

Fast visual engine in C++

Pure Data

Node based programming engine.


$$

Max / MSP

Market leader in node based programming language.




Machine learning

Machine learning is the new and interesting. I have not sorted this list out but here are some interesting links:

https://runwayml.com/

https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/

https://ai.google/tools/

https://ml5js.org/

https://www.tensorflow.org/

Source code handling

Online Collaboration

With elearning it is neccesary to have good shared chatroom / meeting space here are some of the online tools to do so:

https://slack.com/

https://discordapp.com

https://talky.io

https://zoom.us

https://meet.google.com



Network protocol debugging

https://packetsender.com/

https://www.wireshark.org/