Free and easy to learn 3D CAD

[earlgo]

Ok, thanks for the guess. There was never this kind of lag with a local SolidWorks installation, but OnShape is a more powerful program. You may have the right of it.
This pc has a 3GHz processor, 8Gbytes of RAM and 750Gbytes of storage space on a Windows 10 64bit OS. It only has an Intel HD graphics card and that may be the issue.
--earlgo

[Patio]

you can go to either companies website and they will tell you the specs required for their software. I think they like 16 gigs of RAM also.

[earlgo]

Patio: I upgraded my video card to one with 2G memory and it helps considerably. Memory upgrade may be next if this is still too slow, but it seems to be acceptable.
Thanks for the tip.
--earlgo

[morsetaper2]

Old thread here. Any feedback or comments regarding the "Free" version of Solid Edge"?

https://resources.sw.siemens.com/en-US/ ... ty-edition

[BryceGTX]

I use FreeCAD.. I started using it about 3 years ago to design for 3D printers. Perhaps one advantage I had is I had no preconceived notions about how 3D cad should work, so for me it was about learning. In the last 3 years I have generated hundreds of new designs and printed thousands of parts including the design of my engine for my 4-4-0 (which is an on going project). As I write, I have three 3D printers running 24/7.

Perhaps one of the learning issues of FreeCAD is the drawing concepts are presented as pure math concepts. For instance to put a hole in a solid part, you do a logical operation called a union of the parts, where the union is defined as a difference. This is not quite intuitive, but it becomes simple after you learn the concepts. Now I can crank out a 3D design in minutes, and have it printing out shortly after.

Now a-days I only design in 3D, so I very rarely use anything other than "Part" mode, except perhaps when I do a revolution of a 2D drawing in which I use "Sketcher". An example is when I make an inside or outside thread.

Here is a fun part I made. It is a curved train track. Its 1.9" width for a cheap plastic Santa train that runs around the Christmas tree. The Kids and grandkids grew up with this train and the tracks were breaking apart. So I designed new more robust tracks with better custom connections. So this train should be good for another 40 years.