SolidWorks

[LWM]

Does anyone know the pros or cons of SolidWorks?

Does anyone have a copy of SolidWorks that they are willing to part with?

[Matt]

I'm a Pro-Engineer guy myself..... SolidWorks is a bit more user friendly, albeit less capable, but a well rounded product.

[LWM]

I want something to play with for product design that I can take to the shop and have thenm make my products from my drawings, will this program work of is there something better I should be looking at that will not cost me a fortune.

[Matt]

To give you the "quick and dirty", it all depends on what your intentions are. If you're looking to have parts CNC'd, then 3D modeling yourself CAN be a huge time/cost saver.... the caveat here is that you must make the model "correctly" (just because it's the right shape doesn't mean the CNC will be able to make it). So for someone who isn't doing this for a living and/or doesn't have the experience, it is usually better to have the CNC shop do their own programming off your 2D drawings.

That gets to the next point... what level of "designing" are you looking to do with the software? If you're looking to make professional level drawings, then AutoCAD is probably your best bet... depending on the complexity of the part.

I'm not sure how much it costs, but you may want to look at Autodesk Inventor. I'm a mentor for FRC (First Robotics Competition) and they're pushing Inventor as a good entry level 3D program for the students to pick up... so i'm guessing it's very user friendly. I haven't played around with it much because FRC also provides a Pro-E Wildfire 5.0 license that I use for the robot design; and just due to lack of time I haven't had a chance to play with/learn Inventor. I believe its cheaper than SolidWorks... but don't take my word on that.

[TrialByFire]

We use Solidworks here and I am a huge proponent. I know ProE is a more capable but also more expensive I believe.
The professional version of Solidworks which I have here at work is $4000 or so, plus subscription costs. I got an educational version for my son to learn on at home ($130 at AcademicSuperstore.com) so he could get a decent summer job while he goes to college. You can also get some pretty good tutorial packages for it.

What I love about SW is the sheetmetal package which I have been using to play around with on a front bumper design. You can build a solid bumper, shell it out to say 1/4" thickness, then convert it to a sheetmetal part and unfold it! Very cool.

Like Matt says, it's pretty user-friendly, but there is still a good learning curve (2 weeks or more) before you can become productive.

[superacerc]

I've got a copy of solid works and it's pretty sweet. Definitely more user friendly. My buddy uses it in an architectual firm for building/room design and it's quite amazing what he comes up with. I'm not proficient with any cad program so I suppose my opinion isn't worth much but i like it.

[El Cid]

SolidWorks is standard in the off-road accessory biz. Very powerful, very expensive, and very difficult to learn without experience.

For quick mock-ups you can try Google Sketchup.