CAD software

[mrbios]

Head of DT woodwork has decided not to renew the school yearly license for solidworks, looking for something he can use in its place, but probably not quite as bulky as solidworks.

 

He's looking at Sketchup and Tinker cad at the moment, i've personally never heard of the latter, but after recommendations from anyone here that i can point him in the direction of

 

Thanks

[robyholmes]

Take a look at Autodesk, they offer free licences to education and while it might still be 'blucky' you can't complain at free.

[birchanger]

I agree with @robyholmes. We went Autodesk about three years ago as it's free to schools and students. Schools can get a network-installed version of just about all of the huge raft od Autodesk products, and students can download locally-licencsed copies for home. Quite a bit of it is now going to't Cloud, so that means that the management is getting harder, but not too bad so far.

[mrbios]

Just noticed that Tinker Cad is an autodesk product, web based from the looks of things. Looks quite simplified like Sketchup.

 

I guess it depends what he wants to do with it, how advanced he wants to get as to whether we'll need something bigger than that or sketchup. Nice to know there's lots of free options though.

[just_david]

autocad is free but just as clunky.

 

i don't think sketchup comes close to being as powerful. in fact isn't it almost a different type of tool?

 

Sketchups more a, make a pretty 3d image whereas autocad and solidworks are proper cad/cam modeling softwares.

 

We run both sketchup and solidworks. IT teach sketchup as a 3d modeling tool and tech use solidworks as a cad/cam tool, form y7 upwards