Free of charge and sub £500 CAD programmes

FOC

TinkerCad I used it when I first started with my 3D printer, very easy to use and quickly gets you up and running. I did move on to Fusion 360 as, to me, it appeared to offer a lot more.

Sketchup

PS Tinkercad is an Autodesk product like Autocad and Fusion 360!

I’ve not tried this one (s) but looks quite good and is aimed at us! Has anyone used it?

DevCad

@rong Interesting, if I had more time I would have a play with Devcad.

@pylonuk The only things that put me off are that firstly it only runs on a Windows PC, not MAC (unless running VM such as Parallels) and secondly the interface is a bit 'old school' and could do with a revamp to bring up to date. I've got a 7 day demo of it on my Windows laptop that I use for the laser cutter so will have to give it a go over the next few days. I'm hoping that it will help in producing models that I can 'kit' using 3mm and 6mm Depron.

@rong Yep have used Dev Wing and Dev Fus, Dev Wing is very good, but Dev Fus was a bit finicky, especially if you weren't drawing a standard fuselage.

I use Tinkercad all the time and have produced a lot of designs for modeling and non modeling bits.

The one big downside it it doesn't do compound curves very well.

All the 3d printed parts on my SE5 were done with Tinkercad.

I've enjoyed the whole series on digital methods, so keep up the good work.

On the Cad discussion it was mentioned that starting in 2D might be a good idea.

Any recommendations for Free or low cost 2d packages before jumping into the full 3D solid models?

Airfoil plug-in for Fusion 360 that I used in the presentation 

https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=5447707798035545266&appLang=en&os=Mac

@soarmansw Take a look at the presentation that Ron has done on CAD (ITAT 07/03) I am actually thinking there is no point in doing 2D CAD anymore.

Maybe Ron could chime in on this?

In the Air Tonight 7th March @7pm, 2D design work for laser cutting using Fusion 360 with Ron Gray – Recording added | Season 3 | BMFA In the Air Tonight

@soarmansw my view is that for we modellers, Fusion 360 caters for most, if not all of our needs and in a lot of respects is easier to use in 2D than dedicated 2D packages. I suggest that you download a free copy of Fusion 360 and give it a go, it may appear daunting but it really isn’t!

I've tried a few over the years and finally settled on Fusion 360. The main reason for this is that I find it far more intuative than any other package to use. I definately get on better with the parametric packages. Is there any benifit in starting a directory for people to share their experience of using with others?

Radiospares Design Spark is my second choice and worthy of note

Freecad is another one

Tinkercad, I couldn't really get my head around it

I'm not sure if this is the same for others but it's speed of adoption which is the clincher for me (i.e. how quickly can I produce something). I am very greatful for having done technical drawing at school 🙂

One that I missed from the list is Blender  https://all3dp.com/2/blender-stl-how-to-make-3d-printable-stl-files-in-blender/ I've not used it but it should be excellent at the more freeform modelling such as pilots and othre freform shapes on models that require mesh modeling.

An excellent presentation by Ron Gray. I've been using Fusion 360 for a few years and Ron's presentation added a few more tricks for me to try. 

Now I can save dxf and the Airfoil Tool works wonderfully.

Fusion 360 it is then.

Thanks for the comments.

Cheers,

Sean