Free / Cheap D+T software

[Jona]

Hi all,
My Dad is in the process of setting up a small computer room at his school. They have a very limited budget for application software. So looking for suggestions for free/cheap D+T / office software so far have:

Open Office
The Gimp
Scribus
Serif's free stuff

PCs will be running Windows XP, although will have no internet access.

Suggestions greatfully appreciated

Cheers
Jona

[budgester]

For Design and Tech have a look at

QCAD

I used it to create

C r e a t e - I n s p i r e

Which we then cut out on our laser cutter here.

[K.C.Leblanc]

Our DT department use Google Sketchup quite a bit.

[Griffo]

Westpoint bridge designer

Lets you build and design bridges and then test them with loads

scratch

Animation / programming software

[ricki]

Hi Have a look at TechSoft Downloads at 2d design its not free but it appears to work well .

Richard

[vote-for-pedro]

Not a cad prog but paint.net is a very good free photoshop clone

[Hacksawbob]

numpty physics, keep 'em quiet in a wet break!

[SpuffMonkey]

Google SketchUp is a great tool

[Richard_Finnigan]

Anim8or for 3d modelling is quite good, takes a bit of learning though, hardly ever crashes and runs on lower spec systems and its also got a small and active community around it so there are tutorials available for it.

http://www.anim8or.com/main/index.html