Need a good CAD program.

[Juice]

I was doing some mechanical drawing today for a project in my home theater. After drawing out a simple plasma suport frame design on some 11x8" paper, I scanned my drawing into the computer only to find that the scanner can't pick up a lot of the detail. Needless to say, pencil on paper is ancient by todays standards anyhow.

I have not worked with CAD for years, and lately I have noticed that I have increasingly needed a simple CAD program for some of my projects. Does anyone on here know of a nice, basic CAD program that is simple to learn, use, and renders 3D images?? I'm not looking for an $800 AutoCAD for my $30 projects. I would like to keep the cost under $100 if possible.

 

[JoeSchmoe]

Perhaps you can try getting one of those "student" versions. I think most of those are ~100. So if you are (or know) a student, you should be able to pick one of those up real cheap. I think solidworks for students is about $70-80.

-- Joe

 

[NimbleSexyXquisite]

MMm Solidworks is a popular polymetric CAD program, last time I used Catia V5 by Dassualt Systems, the student version was going from $300.00

What Area are you from, perhaps you can use one of out labs.

Goodluck!