I am very interested in learning how to use and design things with CAD software (I am a high school student). A quick look at the AutoCAD website showed me that there are like a million different variations of software that you can buy and install… Are there any CAD softwares out there that are affordable, and which one should I get? I have a Microsoft laptop with Windows 10.
Thank you!
Affordable for a random high school student or family? No. They are geared toward businesses, and their licenses are priced as such. When you start college, you will likely have a free copy available to you, though. Which software will be most useful to you will depend on your field of study and eventually what company you work for. Some of the more popular ones out there are SolidWorks, ProENGINEER/Creo (seems to change names every other year), Unigraphics/NX, CATIA, and the various AutoDesk products.
Autodesk has a very good educational discount download policy, even in High School. If your school offers tech ed classes, check with them. My daughter started with AutoCAD Inventor and AutoCAD for Architecture in HS, now still uses AutoCAD stuff in grad architecture school. Never paid a dime, too.
To design things some 3D package would be useful.Inventor was decent, but Rhino is pretty awesome. If you’re really patient 3DSMax is free I think (http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/3ds-max) but it really needs a serious laptop (she has a monster $3k Dell 6800). I don’t think Rhino is free but we paid like $89 for it, it’s very powerful and easy to use, and runs fine on an i5.
Take a look at Onshape (much like Solidworks etc, but “on the cloud” - runs on any device). It is free for students and educators - https://www.onshape.com/edu
(Nonstudent accounts are free too, if you have fewer than 10 private drawings - https://www.onshape.com/cad-pricing).
http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/all
A lot of the autodesk products are free for the purpose of education. This includes Inventor and Fusion.
Edit: I re-read the original post, and for doing cad work on anything very complex, the software will be a little slow on a basic laptop. Definitely take a look at onshape as suggested above. It pretty simple, but it does the job. Feature wise, it’s roughly equivalent to what SolidWorks was in the year 2000 timeframe. I currently run onshape on a cheap, atom powered windows tablet.
@Shanban1607 - Do you have experience doing drawings / drafting by hand? If not, it would be good to learn some basic concepts before learning CAD software. (That’s the way my generation did it… but admittedly not sure it has to be that way.). Doing a quick google I didn’t find any free general drafting tutorials, but perhaps others can add relevant links.
As some others have mentioned above, a lot of the major industry-standard solid modeling companies offer free versions of their product for students, including Autodesk (Inventor and AutoCAD), PTC Creo/ProE, Siemens SolidEdge. However, like @DecideSomeHow said, these require a computer that can handle resource-heavy graphical applications. A typical laptop is unlikely to be able to handle them.
I’m a boy scout and super lucky that my scoutmaster has a business that uses CAD and we’ve gotten to do projects with it. Maybe you could ask around where you live if you could shadow someone who uses it? Or friends of your parents? Any experience is better than none.
For those considering freebie Onshape … there are pros/cons of a cloud tool. You (and your collaborators) can access the drawing from anyplace/device … but you do need internet access. It seems a reasonable tradeoff.
https://www.onshape.com/cad-blog/whats-more-accessible-cloud-based-cad-or-desktop-installed-cad
My daughter has used Inventor, 3DS Max, and Rhino and I’ve played with all three. Inventor back then was meh. 3DS Max requires a very serious computer to run. Rhino was the absolute no brainer easiest to learn but the student license is $80. I’v tried SketchUp, not impressed.
Rhino also runs well on lower powered machines.
You might also check out Draftsight. It is 2D and shares many similarities with AutoCAD. Comes Dassult Systems; the same company that makes SolidWorks.
http://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/
Forgot to mention that there is a free version of Draftsight.