Help requested in choosing CAD software

[Wayne]

Not enterprise, but we are commercial.

Also, I think on their free setups all of the files are available to the public. Not great when running a business that sells those items.

 

[jmf11]

Hi,

I'm using FreeCAD. I learned CAD with Fusion360 hobbyist licence. But they restrict applicability every year. I finally switched to FreeCAD and I'm OK with that. It is less "integrated" than Fusion360, but at the end it does the job I need. The community is very active and helpful. There are a lot of tutos on Youtube. For 3D printing, connection pieces, structural parts... this is really fine. I have not tried complex curved shapes like fuselage.

It's one on the "too many" tools / options /ways to do things. But using "part design" workbench as a starting point does already a lot.

And there is some hope that the tool will progress over years

JMF

 

[doug35]

Catia - One of my former employees is off at a fancy aviation college and they use Catia, he was just complaining about it last week. Very old school, complicated and SLOW. Seems it drives many students like himself that have previous CAD skills rather nuts, but it is what Aerospace has used for the last 20 years and still most use today.

I used CATIA closer to 30 years ago. Parts were designed on SGI Indigo workstations. We took the 3D models of all of the parts in the aircraft and used a SGI workstation the size of a small freezer (Onyx? AKA the 'Jurassic Classic') to simulate the assembly sequence. In comparing it to some of the current PC based packages, I still think its ability to work with complex surfaces is hard to beat.