Good luck. Everyone has their own reason for their choice so you will have to make yours. I am a CAD user professional for the last nearly thirty years of my working life and grew up using Autodesk products, now using Fusion 360 as well as older version of Inventor (which I prefer). It would be ideal for you to get someone close to you to give you some hands on as the questions are many for a beginner and can be easily answered by a seasoned user. There is always the question of do you want a free program or are willing to pay.

At the most basic level there is Tinkercad – suprisingly good for 3d printing. You can 2d cad with basic Visio, I use F360 but it is far from intuative especially if you dont use it often, loads of tutorials on utube. Its not an easy thing to get into. Good luck

Bob,

When I started in 3D Print, a friend suggested that to "get going" with my own 3DP designs I first used Open SCAD for simple objects. It is script based and very easy to learn in small steps (which is not really the case in other 3D CAD systems). You can be designing and 'printing' things the same evening you start up with it (I did so). There are also a lot of SCAD designs on Thingiverse that can be modified without too much effort – indeed some come with a "customiser" that will let you very simply change key parameters. Here is one of my designs for a motor 'mount' – it's just a few line of script and I've printed several different versions of this for my various projects.

However, for my more complex modelling/engineering needs (and to replace TurboCAD 2D) I had to choose one of the modern commercial 3D systems. All the main ones have their advocates here and since they all require a high level of commitment in time and effort to learn, it's not really surprising that once you've made that investment – you might be reluctant to change.

In some ways (to my mind) I was fortunate that I finally made the 'switch' last year (a little later than many here) and was therefore able to download (the then new for Hobbyists) Solid Edge 2020 (Community Edition). It is a lifetime license and free to download (no cloud involved). It will only run on Windows and has no CAM functionality. Apart from that, it is a really wonderful tool – and importantly (at least for me) – there were also some excellent e-Tutorials provided to get me going.

These step you through various exercises but the actual work is done in SE2020 itself – so after each learning exercise you will have a finished model/drawing in SE. I am far from proficient yet but I am already producing useful work, such as the control box below. I'm sure others will have more impressive work but from nothing to this in about 8 months occasional use is really good for me – much better than I ever managed in Fusion.

So, I would very highly recommend Solid Edge to you or anyone else needing a modern (commercial power & quality) 3D CAD system.

Regards,

IanT

Agree Lars offers some excellent tutorials but you can learn at your own pace by using the pages found at the following link.

**LINK**

Emgee

Nigel/Bob – these days it's a bit easier to find out about this kind of thing than it was just from the printed word a few years ago. The problem is that there is so much stuff out there in the 'Interweb' and not all of it is very good. I found this when first trying to learn Solid Edge – there were some fairly good videos but also some really terrible ones. Some of them were very hard to follow, had no obvious structure and were far too fast paced. Absolutely useless for learning.

My "go-to" guy these days is Dr Mohammed Seif – who is a Professor of Mechanical & Civil Engineering at Alabama A&M University. He is Egyptian (so has an accent) but I find the pace of his delivery very conducive to self-paced learning – and the fact that he makes the odd mistake is also kind of reassuring too. He starts with the simple and gradually works up to the more complex – all in a very structured way. I also find his videos very useful for memory jogging/revision when I've not used SE for a few months (as happened around Christmas/New Year).

Here is his first 'beginners' lesson and I think it will give you some idea about working with Solid Edge without the need to download it.

Learning Solid edge – Lab 1 – Dr M Seif

Hope this helps.

Regards,

IanT

Take a look at thread

Learning CAD with Alibre Atom3D | Model Engineer (model-engineer.co.uk)

and perhaps also

Alibre Atom3D – Processes (model-engineer.co.uk)

Atom3D is one of several options you could consider.

Before you invest lots of your time into any one software choice, think about what you might want to do in the future – is it important to be able to produce 2D drawings of your 3D designs? Will you be working with Assemblies or just Parts? Check that your future needs are catered for.

Take a look at learning and support options – tutorials, videos, is there an active user forum. This will be particularly important for free/inexpensive options.

Some of the less used systems have approaches to modelling that are quite different from the more mainstream products – not necessarily 'bad' or 'wrong' – but there might be less people who are able to assist you with problems.

Whatever option you go for – do take the time to work through the basic level tutorials. If you don't you'll probably trip up when you try to model something real.

I use Fusion 360 which is free in a limited sense for hobby users.

It isn't too difficult to learn once you get your head around how it works. If you ever used google sketchup back when that was free you will already have some knowledge.

I did a thread called Making a start with FreeCAD a couple of years ago, so it should still all work! It's designed to take a beginner step by step through a number of common 3D processes with practical examples and pictures. As FreeCAD is free, there's no cost if you don't like it! FreeCAD parts can be 3D printed.

Though I find FreeCAD useful I'm not banging the drum for it in particular. Though it's a good introduction to 3D and might do all you need, it's also a stepping stone to one of the more advanced products like Alibre etc. Knowing FreeCAD made it a lot easier for me to understand and appreciate Fusion360.

Dave

I don't disagree with Brian with regards the need to actually work with 3D to gain proficiency but I do think it is essential to focus on getting the basics right first.

I was a TurboCAD user for well over 20 years, starting with Version 4 (free CD on a magazine cover) and three upgrades later ended up using TC 2016. I self-taught myself TC4 using a very poor "User Manual" that was little more than a list of screen commands – with no structure at all. It took me ages to understand 'snaps' and 'layers' and for many years I just used the pull-down menus. Then a few years back, I found Paul (the CADs) videos and my use of TC was completely transformed – mostly by ignoring the pull-down menus in favour of key board commands. So I'd spent 15+ years "using" TC but not doing so very well. I probably wasted a great many hours of my spare time because of this.

I did try to migrate to TC 3D but it really wasn't viable in the De Lux versions I had. I also downloaded Fusion but could not get the 'momentum' necessary to make progress with it and I had already deleted it before I came across Solid Edge.

My earlier TC experience made me determined to try and be systematic in getting the basics right. The Siemens eLearning tutorials provided are very good and made this much easier to do. I think I spent about a week doing one lesson an evening (or so) about six or seven hours all told. Not that hard to do!

This was key to my being able to move on, as I then had the basics. As mentioned earlier, I also worked through a number of Dr Seif's Labs and was pleasantly surprised to find that I could actually complete them. This new found 'confidence' has really helped to motivate further use.

Where I very much agree with Brian, is that to become proficient, you do need practice. He's drawing a 3.5" loco – and I'm currently drawing a Midland Compound in Gauge '3' (trying to do a little every week as my skills and product knowledge improve).

So my experience is that it is very worthwhile to "Just" learn the basics (of whatever system you choose) before jumping in – at least it has been for me.

Regards,

IanT

I won't argue with anyone that CAD programs are complicated, but that's also true word processors and spreadsheets.

What a prospective CAD user needs to be aware of before they start is the underlying concepts, both in general and how each program applies them, but I would suggest that they're a lot easier to understand than those needed for 2D drawing!

If you will want to design parts to 3D print and have no 2D CAD experience, I would go straight to 3D. That way you won't have to "unlearn" the 2D approach before you start on 3D.

I started on a a 2D Cad package that ran on Windows 3.11 – can't recall what it was called, but it used a bespoke tablet and stylus to drive. The company had a couple of upgrades on this. but it seemed to die when Win 98 came along. So a change was made to AutoCad LT. There was no formal training on either – just a couple of hours with a colleague who had worked out the basics and then on to the first job – on the basis of "work it out for yourself" or "when you get stuck, you will know what questions to ask". I largely got there in the end !

Change of employer, to one who who had no CAD. I had a limited requirement & the (recent start up) company had an equally limited budget for such things, so the then free 2D package Draftsight from the makers of Solidworks did all that was required on the available budget and, as a bonus, worked almost exactly like AutoCad LT. Until Draftsight chaged from "totally free of charge" to an "paid annual subscription" model a couple of years ago – with added disabling of existing installations if you didn't pay. I now use NanoCad Free – not quite as capable as Drafsight, but close enough for what I need it for & very similar to use. The free version is not as hobbled as some & I have not yet found a need for the extra features available on the paid for versions.

Then I bought a 3D printer – and with that came the desire to be able design "stuff" to print on it rather than just download other people's "stuff" from Thingiverse. To use the "professional" 3D CAD packages available FOC mentioned here (Solid Edge, Fusion 360) would require the purchase of a substantially upgraded computer, so current PC hardware & available budget pointed to FreeCad.

Which is where the familarity with 2D CAD becomes a liability ! The learning curve is very steep and the method of working is very different to 2D & I found a series of tutorials on YouTube to be very useful in making a start and actually progressing to the point of being able to design & print some simple parts. Though I have a very long way to go to become even vaguely proficiant with FreeCad, I am at least not so intimidated by it now.

A tip for anyone who wants inexpensive access to SolidWorks – join the Experimental Aircraft Association for $40 year. One of the member benefits is access to SolidWorks Education Premium

Nigel B.

I was wondering when someone would mention OnShape! My last experience of CAD software was AutoCad, back in the late 1990s, and I've tried nothing else since, but my experience with OnShape has been very good: it works well, seems bug free, and the documentation is excellent. I was a bit suspicious of having an entire CAD package running in the browser but it feels effortless, and my desktop machine is not that up-to-date, either.

The designs being saved publicly will obviously be offputting to some, but I find it easy enough to make up nonsense names for anything I feel proprietary about!