New to 3D printing. Solidworks or Autocad for design?

[Sebastian Finke]

I haven't found any soft remotely close to CATIA.

It is just so crazily overpriced and good at what it does, it stands apart. ;-)

Honestly, though, if Nissan, Dassault, Boieng and Airbus agree to pay for developments of that, ... must be some good in it.

+1000. Add to that list Mercedes and McLaren.

Nothing comes close Catia. However for my business I could never afford. Bought Geomagic Design instead (Alibre Design back then). Haven't looked back as it has managed all my product and mould designs.

[Sebastian Finke]

Solidworks is <snip> one of the most comprehensive design packages out there

No, it is not not. It is mid-range at best. What is better? Off the top of my head: Catia, Creo, NX, SolidEdge, ZW...

However I certainly wouldn't agree with Sebastian... Freeware is always 'better' than paying for software... clearly?

Free does not make it better. This is not subjective either. Even if freeware does the job it is nowhere near pro software in terms of functionality.

[Mjolinor]

Free does not make it better. This is not subjective either. Even if freeware does the job it is nowhere near pro software in terms of functionality.

Where GPL and other stuff wins out is fixing bugs. It is massively better in that respect where bugs will be repaired within a couple of days as opposed to never (Micro$haft) / months or even years. It also has the advantage of allowing you to change things to make the software do what you need, A good example of that being Marlin / Inkscape where both pieces of software can be made to work with each other for your own specific requirements.
I would always says open source is better in my opinion.