New Guy looking for 3D design software recommendations

[Hugues]

But to be fair, from personal experience with both, Blender will take much more time to reach a basic level, compared to AD Fusion 360.

[ServiceXp]

+1 For Fusion360. It's mind blowing that a program with so much power is free for makers/enthusiast.

[simpo]

I recommend Blender which is free..

[ralphzoontjens]

I hear Fusion360 is good but still in a different class than professional CAD systems.

Given it has a 90-day free trial period and not prohibitively high price, I recommend Rhinoceros if you want to get involved in serious 3d modeling. There is a free plugin, grasshopper, which lets you perform amazing math-driven operations on 3d models.

[Sebastian Finke]

Given it has a 90-day free trial period and not prohibitively high price, I recommend Rhinoceros if you want to get involved in serious 3d modeling. There is a free plugin, grasshopper, which lets you perform amazing math-driven operations on 3d models.

If we are going down the road of proproetry software and Rhino being mentioned then I think Moi3D needs to be thrown into the mix. Code is written by the same guy that wrote Rhino so there is a lot of overlap, it is very simple to use and costs only $295. I bought it and use it a lot, particularly when working with surfaces.

[curious aardvark]

Has anyone here ever tried Spaceclaim ?
Only ever seen them at the tct show, it always looks good and I stand there and pretend I know what they're talking about :-)

But never heard of anyone not at the show actually using it.

[dklassen]

I use SpaceClaim and it's awesome. Doesn't come cheap though like most higher end packages.

[Ama-fessional Molder]

Blender is pretty lackluster for dimensional work.

Sketchup is wonderful if you have no idea what you are doing, but you have to make sure your geometry is proper. I have years of practice with the software, but it only takes minutes to get the basics down.

[Geoff]

Blender is pretty lackluster for dimensional work.

Sketchup is wonderful if you have no idea what you are doing, but you have to make sure your geometry is proper. I have years of practice with the software, but it only takes minutes to get the basics down.

Blender is perfectly fine for dimensional work, I'm not sure what part of that you missed. I've been using it for , well I forget now since it came out.. and it's metrics have always been spot on, especially when it comes to 3D printing. Like most Software you need to actually learn how to use it correctly. Many people get scared of it's interface, but it's fairly intuitive.

[curious aardvark]

But does anyone who's not a commercial cad designer actually NEED commercial cad software, when there's so much around that's free ?

I'd say not.