Is Solidworks a good program for a designer newbie?

[JMK]

I'm looking to get my nephew into 3D design. He is very artistic and is always asking me about 3D printing. I think he would be tremendous at designing stuff. He's only 15 years old but is very advanced for his age. Would everyone suggest buying him a copy of Solidworks so that he can get started, or would something else be more suited for a beginner?

[Donny M. Carter]

I recently looked at Solidworks and it looks awesome. I see a lot of major companies use it. I'm not a student, so the price was a deal breaker.

[old man emu]

It is always a wise move to have a look at the free software before handing over money for proprietory design software. Sometime software has bells and whistles that are not often used but you still pay for them. Initially, get him some of the simpler software.

Download 123Design, Blender, Sketchup and ask him to play with those. He'll soon tell you what he finds easiest to use.

Old Man Emu

[Donny M. Carter]

It is always a wise move to have a look at the free software before handing over money for proprietory design software. Sometime software has bells and whistles that are not often used but you still pay for them. Initially, get him some of the simpler software.

Download 123Design, Blender, Sketchup and ask him to play with those. He'll soon tell you what he finds easiest to use.

Old Man Emu

Excellent advise! I need to heed this myself! Thanks!

[atoff]

Solidworks is more for creating "parts" than it is for artistic stuff. It's for parametric modeling. If you want to get him something for more artsy modeling, I'd look into Blender, or Rhino. That being said, I use Solidworks 2014, and really like it. I'm very much still learning, but I feel it's really simple to understand and pretty intuitive. I'd like to eventually learn Rhino, or something similar, to create organic models, but every time I open one of those programs up it looks a bit daunting.

[Feign]

I'll second what Emu said. While I learned on SolidWorks (With a very big company handling the bill for it of course), I can say Google Sketchup is as powerful with regards to modelling individual parts. Where SolidWorks justifies its cost is in assembly simulation, force distribution simulation, finite element analysis and other things that you'll not ever need unless you're actually designing something that needs to fly with passengers or survive a high-speed crash. I'm only just beginning to learn Blender myself and it's a whole different world, but I would reccomend downloading both types.

If Sketchup is graph paper and a ruler, then Blender is canvas and brushes. The best thing for your son is to help him figure out what kind of design he wants to do.