autocad and solidworks

[Bas Wijnen]

Jon Phillips schreef op wo 24-08-2011 om 13:22 [+0800]:
> What would be the closest free software equivalents to Autocad and
> solidworks, the solid modeller?

Many people with Repraps and Makerbots use OpenSCAD, which is more like
Povray than Autocad (because you need to write your model as text, not
with point-and-click), but that's a feature, not a bug. ;-)  However, it
isn't in Debian yet due to some library dependency issues (nothing
license-related).

On
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CAD_editors_for_architecture,_engineering_and_construction_%28AEC%29 is a long list of programs, and there are very few with a free license:
BRL-CAD
FreeCAD
SALOME

(OpenSCAD isn't even in the list, because it's a compiler, not an
editor)
The OpenSCAD page additionally mentions OpenCASCADE. No idea what that
is.

I have heard people say there is no good free alternative to solidworks.
So all the above may be of low quality.

Finally, I know many people also use blender, which doesn't know about
solidness, but has faces with a direction and can export STL files with
computed solidness. They work fine for printing, however they don't
contain colour (which is a downside if you have a colour printer).

Thanks,
Bas