If you’re just looking to get started with 3d modeling, it’s hard to beat Blender. At the cost of free, it’s by far the most affordable way to dip your toes in some modeling tools.

For many workflows it’s world class. If you plan to do more organic forms or don’t need technical precision, then it’s very competitive or preferable to paid software.

You might find it lacking if you plan to do parametric or technical CAD-style modeling. Even then, I think Blender can be a low cost way to learn what you want in your software before investing in more specialized software. You’ll learn enough of the modeling basics to more fluently navigate what other software provides.

I’ve done the trial, and included it in my stickied writeup at [email protected]

It’s not parametric, and for amateur single-part designers the biggest thing there is just that it sucks to realize you screwed up a a height or distance somewhere, and now you have to go back and Boolean on some shape or adjust a bunch of screwholes manually. Constraining drawings and using variables is all very nice if you start making more sophisticated parts or really need to churn them out quickly, but the History is the beautiful part for this use case.

Other than that, I actually liked it quite a bit. The workflow is pretty intuitive, it works smoothly (on Win10 at least), and it has literally the nicest and most ambitious fillet/chamfer heuristics of anything I tried. It will try its best to fillet things right into oblivion.

My only other real concern is that it’s a one-man shop, but if it works mostly bug-free for you, that is not necessarily a huge deal, especially at the price point. I think it’s probably a pretty good value, but I already have a non-parametric app I can use well enough, so I went with Alibre Design on a payment plan, so it feels like a slightly expensive subscription, but then I own the license. I’m still hoping FreeCAD 1.0 will be good enough to make me regret the decision to go with Alibre, but we’ll see.

I still vote FreeCAD. I know Blender too, but I can put down FreeCAD for months and focus on other things. When I return to designing on FreeCAD I have very little skills decay. I have to go make the canonical tutorial doughnut (YT) almost every time I do Blender. I also have some stuff saved with notes for manually editing quad mesh objects, and converting to quads, but now that is on my old backup comp.

This is my primary gripe with renting software. I invest enormous time in learning these things. I am not for sale. I own my time investment and no one has a right to steal that from me. I’ve only used FreeCAD a couple of times in the last year. I’ve spent most of my time on other projects. Printing is not my only hobby or interest. It is a tool and a skill I own, and it complements my other tools and skills well. To me, this is a fundamental part of life as a citizen in a democracy. Once upon a time, around 1k years ago, the average person had no right to own property or their tools. They were called serfs and this societal structure is called feudalism. No ancient citizen of a democracy wanted feudalism. There was no changing of the guard, or coup that started feudalism. People slowly gave up their land and rights to live closer to private security forces of the rich. They trusted them to do the right thing. Eventually they became slaves to those feudal lords with only a theoretical right to recourse from rape and murder.

The software features of CAD are finite. There is nothing to develop in some ongoing fashion forever. Open source is slower and a bit messy at times, but it has been around for a very long time.

I’ve been a (hobbyist license) F360 user for a long time but this having a native Linux (.deb) version and the realtime Blender interaction has me thinking about trying it. $150ish has long been what my brain thinks CAD is worth for my simple needs, so it’s got that going for it. I’ve got a couple quick projects that are good for learning a new platform. One of the designs already made me rage quit Ondsel.

I think it depends greatly on your preferred workflow and what you plan to model. Parametric drafting like fusion involves creating dimensioned and constrained sketches and manipulating them. Where direct modeling like blender or plasticity is more like painting in 3D

You wouldn’t create a figurine using parametric tools as all the fine detail would be impossible to constrain. At the same time a precise gear that needs to mesh would be difficult to model in a direct modeling tool as it’s difficult to make the precise teeth