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After about 10 hours I'm putting together electronics enclosures. I'd say 4 days grinding and I'll be 80% as proficient as I was in Fusion. There is an ordered mode which is has a history mode, but I haven't used it yet. It's weird to operate without history, so if I want shorten a cylinder by 10mm, I don't roll back the history to the extrude and change it, I just make a 10mm cut off the top of the cylinder. With fusion, you pretty much need to know where you're going to end up before you start, with SE, you get more freedom to design as you go. It makes less use of sketches, if you want to dimension something, just click on the face or plane and away you go. But there's nothing I couldn't do in Fusion that I can't do in SE. Lots of googling little stuff like, 'snap to a mid point' which is right there in Fusion. It has a lot more options, so it takes more clicks to do something compared to fusion. About 3 hours of feeling 'I'm stupid' before it all starts coming together. I don't want such an expensive hobby, but I also can't stop myself from tinkering in my interests. I'm not into aviation now, but I acknowledge that I'm a high risk for getting sucked into it, especially seeing the awesome community forums they have (including a dedicated SolidWorks forum at ). I've always wanted a drone, and I had an RC airplane a LONG time ago. So what am I missing? Why isn't everyone else flocking to SolidWorks? I acknowledge there is one very significant downside: I recently almost bought into the Powerup 4 Paper Airplane Indiegogo. I watched the first 10 minutes of a SolidWorks tutorial, and the software looks like it uses the same design paradigm and concepts as Fusion (a few different words for things), but I think it will be an easy transition. But getting SolidWorks for $40, and it includes Simulation, something that is pay-per-use in Fusion? Seems like a no-brainer. I'd gladly pay Autodesk $40/yr for a hobbyist license.

I've searched their site for eligibility requirements, but I can't find anything that says I'm ineligible.

Search /r/SolidWorks for 'EAA' by going to for more info. You can go all out by supporting the EAA by joining them for $40 USD/year, which gives you SolidWorks Education Premium.

#Free software like solidworks reddit trial#

You can get a 6-month free trial with a trial EAA membership at.

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There are free 1-year trial licenses available (USC's AME 101 Syllabus has instructions on how to get it, although I believe that I do not personally qualify for this license. There are free and low cost SolidWorks options. I always wanted to use SolidWorks, but I thought the cost was about $4000 + $1300 / year.

#Free software like solidworks reddit for free#

I chose Fusion 360 because I thought it was the highest level of professional software available for free or low cost.