MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Hi all,
Wanting to start playing around with CAD a bit in my spare time - but not sure what/who to go with. Used SolidEdge for a few assignments at uni, and using NX a bit at work.
What are the most popular packages for different industries? Don't want anything crazy tricky or specific. I'm thinking of going with Autocad?
And then there's surfacing software - where do these fit in - I thought most "normal" CAD packages do surfacing pretty well? I've got Rhino3D (free for Mac) - but not really played around with it yet.
Ta,
Duane.
2D or 3D?
For 2D try draftsight, very similar to AutoCAD and free.
3D...there is Google Sketchup.
I think brant mentioned a free 3D cad package on another thread that's just been released...I think it was called onshape or similar to that...
OnShape not doing surfacing yet.
It'll do extrusions and revolves and sweeps but not organic surfacing.
But it's free and three days into beta 🙂
3D!
Looking for something a little better than Sketchup 🙂
Alias.
If you're going to going to suffer for your art, do it the purest way.
We've been quite impressed by FreeCAD for a few small jobs recently. If you need Assemblies then its probably not the way to go (yet) but its fairly comprehensive. I don't do fancy surface profiles to not sure how good it is for that.
I've been playing around with freecad to to learn some CAD. I use the daily release though as it is in rapid development, it in fairly early beta. Assemblies are meant to be possible but still underdevelopment. Have not tried them. documentation is a bit hit and miss but the forum is helpful.
Does it need to be free? If you want something that will be commercially useful then it is likely to be expensive unless you can get some kind of trial. I would avoid autocad as it works like no other and the 3D is very clunky. Only survives due to momentum. Solidworks is a good all rounder, used in quite a few industries. Will do engineering models and good visualisation. If you've got rhino then that is ok. Tends to be used in more creative environments.
For free 3d, there's also [url= http://www.rs-online.com/designspark/electronics/eng/page/mechanical ]DesignSpark[/url]
I've had a quick play and it's not too bad.