Hello all,
What is the market leader CAD PC for windows package these days, hopefully available for a reasonable price
Cheers
David
How much do you want to spend and what do you want to use it for?
Industry standards are really:
- ProEngineer
- Catia
- Solidworks
They all have pros and cons depending upon what you need to use them for. Catia would be the choice for most people I suspect (it is widely used in
autotomotive and aerospace industries. ProE is also a greta package, although maybe not as inutitive to use. Solidworks is more aimed at the smaller
business/lighter user and in my experience.
Primarily used for 2D dxf drawings for laser/waterjet cutting, also some light 3d work, to show the finished flat plates folded into there final
shape. In CAD terms simple stuff and potential budget £250~£300
Cheers
David
I would agree the main players for engineering and product lifecycle are;
Siemens NX
Dassault Catia
Dassault Solidworks
PTC Creo
ProEngineer is now known as Creo. It's very powerful with great support - I use it daily albeit in an academic setting.
Just seen your reply! A commercial copy of any of those will be way out of budget.
[Edited on 13/11/12 by SeaBass]
Inventor as a competitor to SW. Still miles out of that budget.
There's an inventor lite apparently (though resellers never mention it because it doesnt make any money) but even that is circa £1100 per year.
Maybe up to £500 perhaps
Cheers
David
Autocad is the market leader for 2d CAD.
The above are all excellent products but gor around 100 something like Turbocad might work for you.
Not sure how good it is for folded plates however - you would have to look into that aspect.
I use it occasional y and find it works reasonably well given my lack of experience and it's pretty good at importing or exporting most drawing
formats - especially the pro version.
You can normally download an older version for trial purposes.
Intellicad is a good competitively priced alternative to AutoCAD. It usually forms the basis for other software developers to customise. It uses
virtually the same commands and reads and writes dwg files. At one time there used to be a free version.
http://www.intellicad.org/
I have used software from these developers and been happy with it:
http://www.progesoft.com/
http://www.autodsys.com/
even autocad LT is still not cheap (~£1200) 
free trial's on the autodesk site
rhino is cheaper (€995), but its more for making curvy 3D models (its definatly not a drafting package) - but it does have a free trial to download,
its easy to learn and its compatable with most things (especially dxf/dwg)
If it's just 2D CAD you want then Draftsight - better in my opinion now than standard AutoCad and completely free!
Keep an eye on ebay, full packages of Autocad finish within your budget, especially the LT version.
I use alibre design. Full monty and it may suit your budget. You can upgrade it in pieces when you need to.
quote:
Originally posted by loggyboy
Autocad is the market leader for 2d CAD.
for 2D CAD, Draftsight is fantastic and FREE to download, very well supported and does everything AutoCAD does for nothing!
As for 3D CAD, depending on what you want to do with the models once made, have you looked at PowerSHAPE-e from Delcam? its VERY well respected 3D
software, the -e version is again FREE and it will import almost any file type you can imagine and allow you to work on solids, surfaces and trianges,
the only downside is that if you want to export a file from it you have to pay a fee, but if its just a case of wanting to "see" an
assembled part in 3D this could be ideal. There is also alot of free training videos available and a support forum.
If your not too worried about the legality of the software, just find a site and download a copy of Solidworks as this will do both 2D and 3D with
ease and the training resources on-line are unbelievable.
Another big thumbs up for draftsight.
Free and able. its has tricks that only the latest versions of autocad have and i can do 3D drawings in DS.
Its free.
For 3D rendering without to much detail try sketchup from Google.
Also free to to use..
[Edited on 13/11/12 by bi22le]
Link to the Powershape-e download page:
http://www.delcam.co.uk/software-downloads/index.asp
Link to the draftsight download page:
http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/download-draftsight/
Trained using ProEngineer at uni, very powerful but after using Solidworks for the last 2 years would not go back given the choice. Far easier to work
with and you dont spend anywhere near as much time pulling your hair. Solidwork is a much much friendlier system to work with, also possible to save
ProEngineer parts using Solidworks, not sure from memory if the same is true the other way around.
Both can do all your 2D and 3D work. Both will import and export dxfs which I assume is what you will be mainly using if most of your work is based on
cutting files for waterjet or laser cutting machines.
I use solidworks because it's very user-friendly and intuitive. I am not such a power user that any of its functional hold-backs affect me.
At work (automotive OEM) we use Catia, and I've had brief experience of ProE but Solidworks is still by far the easiest to get to grips with for
relatively simple 2D and 3D drawing for me (I only use it for kit car bits!)
*ETA: Helps to get an academic license 
I am technically a student still as I'm doing a professional qualification, but ask around your local
college/university - we used to get about 50 copies sent to our university for the Formula Student team, I just ask for one every year or so from the
current team (they're 12 month licenses, although it doesn't stop working after that as far as I can tell). All projects are marked as
educational/academic so probably not ideal if you're planning on drawing commercially for clients 
[Edited on 13/11/12 by PSpirine]
In my experience, the more capable the package the less intuitive it is.
Although NX and Catia are very powerful tools and brilliant for modelling complex structures and assemblies, they make a lot of simple modelling a lot
more complicated than need be.
If you only need simple 2d shapes then go with the simplest and cheapest system that can provide it.
quote:
Originally posted by bi22le
For 3D rendering without to much detail try sketchup from Google.
As above, shop around, personally go for something like solidworks if you can, very user friendly.... See if you can get hold of a student copy for your own use
If you don't mind how legit the software is, you can usually get hold trial versions or install the full version without a valid serial or
registration code. Plenty of cracks and keygens for then using it as the full version.
As a student me and my mates had the full the Adobe suite, ProEngineer, Solidworks and AutoCAD installed.
Thanks everyone,
A few things to think about there, I will investigate
Cheers
David
quote:
Originally posted by loggyboy
Keep an eye on ebay, full packages of Autocad finish within your budget, especially the LT version.
A few comments....
Solidworks is my favourite...pricey, but you get what you pay for and not too expensive when you are using it for business. I have the premium package
which I am about to upgrade to 2013 release...original cost was around $7000..
<<< this was designed in SW2008
Autocad...definitely has it's uses, but as said above Draftsight does pretty much all AutoCad does but for nothing.....
Inventor very similar in price to Solidworks, but behind in features and functionality...I use INV 2013 every day in my day job, but it lacks many
capabilities that SW 2008 has....
Inventor lite.....can't do assemblies so it's borderline useless IMO
I agree about Catia and ProE and them being used at big companies, but Solidworks is being used more and more by bigger companies too.
Rhino....brilliant surface modelling tool, not CAD per se as we would define it
Sketch up..again not really CAD at all by any stretch of the imagination, but being free (I think) counts for something.
All IMO of course.....
[Edited on 15/11/12 by Alan B]