New to 3d design/printing

[Roxy]

Spamming every thread in this forum with your irrelevant request isn't going to make anybody here want to help you out with your survey. Post it once, with its own subject heading, and you'll get better response.

Agreed. The problem has been addressed.

[LambdaFF]

@tkster95
Most of the heavy industries in Europe have shifted to CATIA from Dassault Systems. You wanted top of the line : that's it. Dassault, Airbus, Renault-Nissan, ... they all use it. I have a presentation from BELL, they are coming to it as well it seems for maintenance tech pubs.
It includes modules for each specific line of expertise you can think of : pipes, harnesses, moulding, machining, bending, stress analysis, thermal sims... Obviously, it allows for all sorts of parametered renders : sims, vids, .. You probably don't need most of the modules.

I think the licence is at least in the range of solidworks, probably above depending on the range of modules you request. Most of the hardcore expert modules cannot be used without training so you have to take this into account too.

This, like solidworks is an engineer dreamtool but not really made for 3D renders, like the ones you used to make with Illustrator. So, I'm curious as to what you intend. If you want to design a manufacturable working engine, yes, it is the proper tool. If you intend to design a "pretty to look at" engine, not the good tool.

I don't know of a free tool that is made for engineering design. But I agree with the others, try and find a student licence, most offer them.

[awerby]

Another program to look at is Geomagic Design. It works a lot like Solidworks, with a parametric kernal so you can modify the part anywhere in the design history and have the changes propagate through the design. The full program is $1999 (MSRP: we can do a little better) but there's also an entry-level version called Cubify Design that lists for $189.

[curious aardvark]

there's a program that gets pushed at the tct shows.

here's a nice list - program I'm thinking of not on it. But buggered if I can remember the name - Spaceclaim !
The space claim people say it's very good :-) (well they would lol)
And I believe you can download a trial version.
list: http://3dprintingsystems.com/best-so...r-3d-printing/

A lot depends on what you want to design. openscad is probably the best for non-artistic models. free, easy to learn and everything it produces can be sent straight to the printer without any buggering about with netfabb and the like.