This is the best way i've found to learn new ways of doing things without bugging someone asking them 'so. If it pretty much does what you want when you try it, but you cant figure out how to do it quite right then go look for a video or tutorial on using it. If a feature sounds kinda-sorta-maybe like it might do what you want then give it a shot. When it comes to solidworks though, my best advice is to just try stuff. I'd highly recommend getting started with a few of them before doing anything else. There are plenty of tutorials online, as well as tutorials in solidworks itself. If you're not working on something super complex then it doesnt really matter - as long as you get the same result.

I only really use it as a hobbyist because my company got a deal on an extra license, things I build in it usually have about 20% less features when replicated by one of my mech engineers. Solidworks is very easy to begin with, however doing things efficiently takes a lot more experience. Commercial tools will get you results FAST once you get over their steep learning curves - hobby tools tend to have easier learning curves but are slower to get complex results. Quality commercial packages are 4-6 figures depending features/simulation tools. For commercial mills, MasterCam or SolidCam (if using solidworks) are excellent choices - but again come with a price tag to match the CAD software and mill. These are excellent products at a lowprice. For 3d sculpting on a home mill, I'd be using Vectric's Aspire or Cut3D. If you're doing simple 2.5D cutouts with a home mill, I'm a big fan of Cut2D from Vectric. If you don't know what FEA or CFD are, then you're just using the CAD package as a 3d modelling tool - which would lead me to suggesting 3dsmax, blender, maya or (as much as I dislike it for other reasons) Sketchup.įor CAM, it really depends on the complexity of what you're doing. If all you want is to create aesthetic models, and not engineering/doing FEA or CFD on it then something like blender would work fine.

Rhino is a good package I hear and is relatively cheap. I use solidworks too, but if I wasnt using it commercially there is no way i'd use it - it's just too expensive.

My spaceclaim