this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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FreeCAD is the best FOSS program I know for solid modeling. Librecad works for 2D.
I would agree that FreeCAD is the best, but it's not slick and doesn't feel particularly robust. Don't get me wrong, I have no rose tinted glasses on when it comes to Solidworks, but it's generally very usable and very powerful.
Actually Solidworks is consider low to mid market. NX and whatever PTC calls their high end now are the main stream CAD systems as far as I know.
I worked with Creo for years, and ProE before that. I still have nightmares about the cascading unresolved reference screens. I've never used NX, but my understanding is it is AAA, though not super user friendly by default. I've pretty much exclusively used Solidworks for over a decade now, and I have to say that it's generally pretty well behaved, and I've never really found I couldn't do what I wanted to in it. Thus it has become my crutch.
Nice thing about Solidworks is I think is used the ACIS kernel. Means it is directly compatible with a lot of other software.