I'd assumed that the issue would be creating .stl files without Autocad. I've had a love, hate relationship with Autodesk for years....namely with the insanely stupid prices they charge for licensing and what seems to be their almost total control of .dwg and .dxf extensions. As a work around, I was using Autocad mobile (it's had various names over the years) as it was a free product, but suddenly they have decided to charge a fee, no only to use the product, but to download my library of drawings that I have stored in their cloud (not that I wanted to store them in their cloud, but they made it ridiculously difficult to store on a local device). I've tried other programs that work with .dxf (with limited success for multiple reasons) so I might look into TinkerCad, but would prefer not to get sucked into yet another Autodesk product.
As an FYI, I've been using Sketchup for years as it's pretty powerful, intuitive and is the best option I've used for 3D modeling. Sharing a little tip, Sketchup does not support .dxf import (which is a huge pain) but a way, way previous version (back when they were owned by Google) it did have a .dxf import function. Searching around the dark corners of the web, I found the version that had the import functionality installed it, imported my .dxf then saved as a .skb then opened the saved .skb (created using the old version) on the latest version...this is a great work-around.
Lastly, I just looked to see if Sketchup has a .stl export function, not "as installed", but there is a plug-in available (yea!), so I suppose now all I am missing is a printer...and blessings from the wife of course.
