CAD software

redvan22

redvan22

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Hi,
For someone who's a beginner in the realm of CAD, which CAD software would be good for me to start with?

Looking for something free but useful. The few I've looked at boast how they're free but you cannot print or do other things unless you purchase.
I've tried LibreCAD but that's a bit frustrating at times.

I'm strictly a hobbyist, no government or private sector contracts for me.

Mike
 
I use FreeCAD. It's pretty powerful for a free tool. Like any CAD sw, the initial training is tough, but there's loads of videos to get you going. I just kept replaying them slowly to pick up points that I missed. After 10-12 videos I was good enough to do a lot of my own. Basically, once the concepts are in your head, you can do a whole lot.
 
redvan22 said:
Tried them.
Their site didn't seem to be working so I moved on.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I never had a problem with it. I've since switched to SW because they have an amazing veteran deal for their student edition. I had many problems getting it to run, but I have since sorted it out. I just downloaded FreeCAD from the link I posted. It installed and ran with no issues. Perhaps it's your computers or settings. I'm not techy enough to help with that.
 
Gaffer said:
Interesting. I never had a problem with it. I've since switched to SW because they have an amazing veteran deal for their student edition. I had many problems getting it to run, but I have since sorted it out. I just downloaded FreeCAD from the link I posted. It installed and ran with no issues. Perhaps it's your computers or settings. I'm not techy enough to help with that.
Click to expand...
The download link you provided worked and I'm enjoying the program. Nothing like LibreCad. Much more intuitive and the videos are easy to follow along with.

Thank you.
 
I hesitate a bit to bring it up, because it's not the "interactive" experience you might want, but I've been using OpenSCAD to do a HO scale steam locomotive model, and I find it very suitable to modeling mechanical parts. It's script-based, meaning you write a script to make your model, the mouse is only used for navigating the render window. You write things like "cube([1,5,10]);" and it renders a so-called cube in the center of the window of the defined dimensions. Yeah, not a cube, but you get the drift. "cylinder(d=5, h=10);" gets you a cylinder shape of that diameter and height, etc. It has extrusions for making complex shapes, and difference() for subtracting one shape from another to make things like holes and cavities. You define parts and then move them in the window with translate(); essentially, you define enough shapes and move them around you eventually have a locomotive... :big grin:

Here's my locomotive project to-date, every single part modeled in OpenSCAD:

2023-10-19_stl_integration-800x600.png

Won't lie to you , most of it was pretty simple, but there are a few things that defy explanation...
 
I use FreeCad for 2 years now. I started by looking a YouTube video every evening for 2 months. There are some bugs that really frustrated me, but now I know how to deal with them, FreeCad is more productive than my 2D ProgeCad (free) and 2D DraftSight (not free any more).
From CAD to STL 3Dprinting was a peace of cake.
From CAD to CAM for CNC milling, was another steep learning curve. Now I am a happy FreeCad user.

If you want to do this for a living (in time), I think Fusion360 is a better choice because it has less bugs that makes it more productive and more companies use Fusion360.
For me, a hobby user, I don't want the risk that Fusion360 will not be free in future (experienced that with DraftSight) and I have to learn a new (free) CAD software package.

FreeCad is still being developed and gets better every day.
 
I'd personally recommend hobbyist license of fusion360. There's plenty of tutorial videos on youtube about it making the learning curve less steep.
Furthermore the UI is fairly intuitive once you start recognizing buttons etc.
AFAIK you can still do both CAM and export STL's for 3d-printing in it.
Once you're experienced with Fusion, the same concepts carry over to most visual 3D-Cad softwares.
 
redvan22 said:
Hi,
For someone who's a beginner in the realm of CAD, which CAD software would be good for me to start with?

Looking for something free but useful. The few I've looked at boast how they're free but you cannot print or do other things unless you purchase.
I've tried LibreCAD but that's a bit frustrating at times.

I'm strictly a hobbyist, no government or private sector contracts for me.

Mike
Click to expand...
I am afraid the best option is Fusion 360, it is not perfect but has such a huge user base that you just cannot ignore it.
 
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