# Free 90 days Solidworks license



## tino_ale (Jun 17, 2009)

It's free and it's here, for those who wish to check it out :
http://www.solidworks.com/sw/esp/engineering_stimulus_package.html

I'm also DLing Siemens free 2D Solid Edges software.

Since I have zero CAD software background, can someone recommend which one I should try to figure out for drawing flashlight parts?


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## rmteo (Jun 17, 2009)

I started using SolidEdge 10 years ago. About 6 years ago, I switched to SolidWorks and that is what I use for all my electro-mechanical design work - including flashlights. :twothumbs


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## precisionworks (Jun 17, 2009)

> can someone recommend which one I should try


Solidworks is much more capable since it's a 3D program. Learning curve is also steeper. Hardware requirement eliminates older computers with small hard drives & little RAM (they recommend a Core2 Duo processor, 2 Gb of RAM, and 20 Gb of free space on the hard drive). It will operate with 512 Mb of RAM, as long as you have few parts & assemblies on your drawings.

For 2D, Solid Edge is hard to beat, zero cost, and easy to use.


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## KowShak (Jun 18, 2009)

A few years ago I was working with CAD software all day every day and the one recommendation I can make with regard to 3D cad software is to make sure that your graphics card / chipset has decent OpenGL support in its driver and decent 3D capabilities. 

Back when I was working with the CAD software, we had a few different types of graphic cards e.g. nVidia and ATI etc and it was only the nVidia cards that we could get to accelerate the CAD properly, it makes a big difference on parts with more than trivial complexity. Professional graphics cards such as the FireGL and Quadro cards are not in my mind worth paying for, since they have bascially the same chips as the consumer / gaming cards but are much more expensive.


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## tino_ale (Jun 18, 2009)

So you guys recommendation would be to go straight to 3D CAD for flashlight parts?

I start from zero, so I thought maybe 2D would be enough, at least to begin with.


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## BoarHunter (Jun 18, 2009)

Don't waste your time with a 2D package go directly 3D.

SolidWorks and SolidEdge are pretty similar according to reviews although SolidWorks has a bigger marketshare.

For an amateur, the cost of these packages is prohibitive unless you get a Academic License. I use SolidEdge because of this Academic License.


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