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Comment by 55555 | Hacker News Reader

What is the best (affordable!) CAD software for a hobbyist with no experience? I was recently looking into this and the leading software was like 6,000 USD a year per seat.

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I love Rhino (https://www.rhino3d.com/); it's a pleasure to use. It's not parametric like SolidWorks, but you own it for $1K, there's a very helpful community, the company (McNeel) is great, they regularly improve the features (recently added SubD), and it's much easier to learn than SW.

It depends what you want to do. If you want to make stuff for 3D printing, it will be great. If you want to machine things on a CNC mill, you will also need CAM software which can be expensive. madCAM ($1K to own it) works well, but it is unclear whether that has been abandoned.

Rhino community is the most toxic people of the world, never use its forums or you will have anxiety from opening their software.

Parametric? Alibre. It only runs on Windows, but you can buy a lifetime license, and you get a SolidWorks-lite set of functionality. Much more usable than FreeCAD. It also comes with basic CAM software that is sufficient enough for a wood router.

If you're not making a business of it, Siemens Solid Edge Community Edition is pretty nice.

https://solidedge.siemens.com/en/solutions/users/hobbyists-a...

edit: also, Solvespace was mentioned upthread. It's pretty basic, but very nice and easy to use, and has good skill transfer to more featureful CAD programs.

https://solvespace.com/index.pl

FreeCAD. Free and open source. I use it all of the time for 3D modelling and 3D printing.

One of my clients has recently switched to BricsCAD. Cheaper than AutoDesk but not super cheap.

I switched to FreeCAD after Fusion360s license and price changed.

It’s definitely not as advanced as Fusion, but for my needs it’s good enough.

Check out onshape.com, it's similar to fusion360 and is quite good for hobbyists. I use it for parts I need to 3D print.

Second for this -- I worked on a product that used their back-end API several years ago (just before they were acquired). Great group of developers over there.

Are you a student? Military? Some other in? SolidWorks.

What is your back end? Do you want to create 3D art for games? I think Rhino owns that space. Want to 3D print with parametric dimensions? A lot of CAD packages can give you a file that you can feed to your favorite slicer. Have a CNC milling machine? Look for a post processor that works for your machine and work backwards to select the CAD package.

Solidworks is good but not affordable.

Of note: they have made their user forum completely useless and it looks like they will soon adopt a cloud-based, subscription model about which their users are quite unhappy.

I honestly hope their cloud based push causes their downfall. It's different enough that I think it will open the door for millions of users to look around for other options for their CAD software. It's going to be a perfect opportunity for a cheaper (open source??) software to step in and eat their lunch.

Please, no!

They have a "maker license" that's less un-affordable (iirc about $100 or $150 a year?), and they provide access either for free or even more discounted than the maker license for students & the like.

Though based on other comments it sounds like that may not be the case for long so ymmv

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