Choosing Your CAD Software

Choosing the software you will use to visualize your ideas can be a little daunting. Aside from the investment of time spent learning the software, the difference in cost between the bottom and the top is staggering (free to $4,ooo or 235 USD/mo.). The good news, at least on the cost front, is that the “free” segment seems to be growing in both size and functionality. 

Parametric or NURBS? (solid or surface?)

This is probably the first fork in the road. Are you an artist or an engineer? Do your interests have more in common with building mechanical parts or sculpting the hull of a ship? Is your path that of solitary inventor or do your plans include landing a job as an engineer or designer? The answers to these questions may provide some direction as you get started.

If you are ultimately looking to land a job it might be good to know that a quick search on some (Bay Area) employment sites showed a strong preference for experience in Solidworks and AutoCAD over experience in, say, Rhino. But this is really dependent upon the field you might want to enter so you will definitely want to do your research and be sure to include job searches even if you feel like you will be self-employed; you never know how much you may need to collaborate (and, chances are, if most firms in the field are using a particular package, it is probably what their customers expect).

The same might be said even if you want to work on your own and don’t expect to be dealing with actual customers. There is probably a good reason the firms that are doing what you want to do are using a particular format—it probably works. But here there is another consideration… cost. If you aren’t working for someone and have no expectation of receiving compensation directly for your design work, you may be paying an awful lot for a program.

The last time I checked perpetual licenses were still available (though, maybe not for long) and were costing upwards of 4,000 USD for some of these programs. Even Rhinoceros 5, which can be found here for 795 USD is now regularly priced at $1,000. Most companies that provide products like this are starting to move exclusively to subscription services however and, as mentioned above, this can approach a couple hundred USD/mo.

One bright spot is that most of the programs do offer free trials and I encourage you to take advantage of that as you try to hone in on the right software. Unfortunately, the learning curve on some of these programs is really quite steep if you lack any experience with CAD at all and this can make it very difficult to evaluate a programs usefulness to you. So, if you are pretty new to the field, I would recommend first taking advantage of some of the free software out there to acquaint yourself with CAD before using up any valuable trial-time.

The Free Stuff

Try a variety of free programs to get a good feel for the direction you want to take—who knows, you may even find that one of these programs gives you everything you need. There are a lot of free programs to choose from, with varying capabilities and levels of complexity. Be sure to dive in, take some tutorials online and see if something “clicks.” You can find a lists of these programs online pretty easily but I will recommend a few to get you started.

Onshape: CAD in the Cloud–the first system residing fully in the cloud. Don’t skip this one, it seems to be the closest thing to Solidworks out there (as it seeks to move in on their market) and it will give you a really good feel for parametric modeling. Additionally, it currently offers both free and subscription services. Their free service is fully functional–the biggest limit is how much storage you get–and you have as much time as you want to work with it. Their subscription service is currently offered at $100 a month.

TinkerCAD: Intuitive Modeling–TinkerCAD is a “get-it-done” kind of program. You “build with shapes” and it is easy to learn but you will run into walls fairly early in complicated models. TinkerCAD is a great companion for the average guy who has a 3D printer and is making “around-the-house” kind of products.

123D Design: Middleground–123D falls somewhere between TinkerCAD and Onshore (closer to TinkerCAD than Onshape) and I have to say, I am a little hesitant with this recommendation. 123D is deceivingly powerful but I have always felt like I am struggling to get it to do what I want it to do. I started with and spent a good deal of time learning to use Rhino 5 and going from that to 123D was a little maddening. I can’t quite explain my difficulty, it is like it is familiar enough to give you a level of expectation that is then dashed due to some fundamental differences. My recommendation is that you work with this program a little to get some understanding of what you want to do but move on before you get too used to it; in case the same is true in reverse.

Final thought…

One more consideration comes to mind with the advent of the cloud based programs. With a model like Onshape and Fusion 360, most of the heavy graphical lifting is done somewhere other than your computer. When I first got into this, one of the biggest investments I had to make was “building” a computer that could handle the workload foisted upon it by a program like Rhino. Professional graphics cards quickly go from expensive to ridiculous and so even a professional license from someone like Onshape may not be out of line if it cuts the cost of the hardware upgrading you will need do every few years. Now you can base your selection of graphics cards on how many fps you need to turn in Overwatch.

So get started. Play around with some of the free stuff available out there and while you are discovering which software will best suit your needs don’t forget to appreciate how cool it is that you can take what is in your head and transform it into a printable format–with the tools available today, anyone can do this.