Hi

I was pleased to see that the widely used solidworks program is to be made available for makers at a modest fee 99USD a year?

Solidworks is widely used in industry. You get an idea of its usage when you visit free 3D CAD sites like Grabcad. The vast majority of the 3D models available are written in Solid works.

The SW Maker version is not yet available It appears that it will be cloud based.

To me it is the first counter strike against Autodesk Fusion that has a good chance of gaining real traction, It will be interesting to see how this battle plays out. With decent competition users are likely to be rewarded with better options at lower prices.

Google Solidworks for makers there are a number of links to check out.

Regards
John