Program for 3d design

[swansburg]

Hey everyone!

Recently I have been getting into 3d design since i want to be an engineer later on in my life. What i plan doing with it is designing cars/ car parts and also designing pc's/ parts. Just wondering if anyone on here knew anything about this and if they did if they could recommend some programs. I've been using sketchup for the last couple of weeks and got that down pretty good and decided i should move on a to a better program that could better allow be to do what i want to do. Thanks guys

[Hans Christian | Teri]

SolidWorks, Inventor and 3ds Max will get you a long way. If you're a student you should be able to obtain free copies of Inventor and 3ds Max.

[Drown]

Autodesk Maya is a great modeling and animating program. It's a lot more pleasant to use than 3DS Max IMO, and it's not that hard to get used to it. Maya and 3DS Max aren't the best for designing parts though, there are programs like Inventor and other AutoCAD that will do a better job at modeling objects for real life application. Maya/Max are perfect for making video games and animation movies content though. 

 

Maya and 3DS Max both costs ~3500$, but if you are a student you can get a free, 3 years student license. There isn't any limitation or watermark (at least not in the render pictures, but the files it creates are watermarked AFAIK), it's the complete program just like the payware version. You can use it for training/educational purpose but that's it. You're not allowed to release content (like video game mods) with it, etc.

 

Look on students.autodesk.com, they have all the programs listed with a description of each. From there, look at video reviews to see how the program is, and you'll be able to judge whichever is more appropriate for you.

[KaareKanin]

I think autodesk has some sort of free for education software deals. You could look there. Either way, I would recommend using software that uses NURBS.

[swansburg]

I think autodesk has some sort of free for education software deals. You could look there. Either way, I would recommend using software that uses NURBS.

i have some experience with nurbs so it would be nice to have that feature

[KaareKanin]

i have some experience with nurbs so it would be nice to have that feature

AFAIK the only other option would be polygons, and those aren't really good for real stuff :-p

[rashdanml]

SolidWorks is pretty powerful when used right. Pro-E is another option. You'll need to look into getting student versions of the above where possible. Those are the two most common programs used in industry.