CAD Software Alternatives 3

[mjjmecheng]

I am very familiar with Siemens NX, Solidworks, and PTC Creo, as I use these daily at work. I have a number of projects at home though that I would like to find a comparable 2D/3D parametric CAD tool for. Can you recommend any inexpensive alternatives to these? I've dabbled a bit in SolidFace and FreeCAD, but have not found them to be quite as intuitive as those I've mentioned above.

Aside from part design, it would be beneficial to find some software that I could run my own thermal/fluid/vibration simulations with. I am familiar with FloTHERM and a few of the Ansys utilities, but wasn't sure of any home-use alternatives.

Thank you!

 

[HDS]

I forgot about this. It is a free version of one of the commercial packages.

http://www.rs-online.com/designspark/electronics/eng/page/mechanical

 

[mjjmecheng]

@ Flash3780,

Just curious if you happen to know the accuracy of some of these models. Not that it likely matters for some of the home design projects I have in mind, but it might come into play if it was used for any stringent analysis. I ask because I use both FloTHERM and Ansys Icepak at work and have found some are better than others for different tasks - much like the rest of this software. For instance, we've done some fluid analysis using both of the mentioned suites and it appears that Icepak, though a bit more cumbersome GUI, tends to have algorithms that more closely match test results of physical prototypes. On the other hand, we've found that FloTHERM is typically the better choice for doing circuit card or assembly thermal (steady-state and transient) analysis.

Like I mentioned, a 5~10% error is not a huge deal when it comes to analyzing things for home projects, but I'd be curious to know if anyone has had experience validating the results.

Thanks for the suggestions!