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Comment on Exploring the available CAD software

This is a field where free software is unfortunately way worse than the paid options, and all the paid options are expensive.

If you are still a student, you can get SolidWorks for 100 USD a year, or Creo, Inventor, or Solid Edge for free. Completely non-commercial though.

If you are serious about this, get a SolidWorks permanent standard license (it’s like 4 thousand USD?) or ZW3D permanent license which is just a bit cheaper, it’s a relatively new Chinese company though, so a bit of jankiness is expected, but up to you if you want to try them out.

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acutfjg@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Way worse? Maybe more difficult to learn.

FreeCAD is a great free open source 3D modeling software with plenty of online resources to help you get started.

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- ashu@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  FreeCAD has a lot of problems that stem from things like opaque errors (wire is not closed, failed to recompute) to how some features aren’t just there (multi surface sketch is the big one for me) that continuously break my flow. I could adapt but it feels a bit miserable to use compared to others. It’s not “hard” it is actually “worse” (for now)
  
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- CADmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Ive tried to use FreeCAD before, I’ve tried to learn how it works, and its just so different from other programs that I have used that I have to completely re-program myself to use it. I really want to like it, but its just such a pain in the ass to use.
  
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- MargotRobbie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’d say the opposite is true. The pro CAD softwares are a lot more user friendly than FreeCAD in term of UX, so easier to learn too.
  
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  - elauso@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    That’s literally what they said though? FreeCAD is more difficult to learn (but you have a lot of online resources to help).
    
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adityajazz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’ve tried ZW3D. What I can say is it looks like NX. I’m familiar with it cause I use NX before. And it capable doing g3 continuity. As far as I know it has good price, permanent license, and maintenence skip (just skip maintenance and after years just pay 1 time maintenence fee you will get the latest version). It is not as good as Siemens NX, needs more fix/features here and there. But it has potential in the future.

But for hobbyist I’ll recomend Solid Edge, because it has no imitation besides for non-commercial use. This one is really powerfull if you can use sync tech mainly for prismatic modeling. And 2024 version has been launched, just wait it till community edition will be updated.

Creo I never touch it so can’t say about it. But I like the UI.

Inventor, I have tried but didn’t like it.

CMIIW

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- MargotRobbie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Excellent information on most of the CAD packages!
  
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ashu@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Solid Edge is available for non-commercial use to everyone, I’m almost done writing its article and it looks really good tbh!

Never heard of ZW3D, sadly the pricing seem a bit steep for what I’m looking for :S

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- MargotRobbie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Do write a bit on synchronous modeling.
  
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  - ashu@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It’s up! Let me know if you have anything I should look at correcting
    
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    MargotRobbie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Looks good to me.
    
    You can use Lemmy as your comment section. Would like to see you try out more CAD software, since this place really needs original content to grow.
    
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