Quote Originally Posted by Neale View Post
My apologies in advance if I'm teaching you to suck eggs. Always difficult to know where someone is coming from, but this is based on my own experience as a self-taught TurboCAD user moving to one of these flash new, parametric, sketch-based, 3D packages. I'm sure from odd comments made that there are some professional Solidworks users and the like out there who would think my comments a bit trivial, but there we are....
I have to agree with Neale here, I too am a TurboCAD user and pound-for-pound it has got to be one of the best value packages around (see an example of my use of it here ).
Whatever you do, there will be a learning curve and with some packages it is steeper than others. It took me about 3 months of regular evening use to get comfortable and the biggest help is good tutorial material. For TurboCAD, Don Cheke has brilliant key-by-key tutorials and for me this was money well-spent as it shortened the learning curve dramatically. The program supports 40 different CAD file import and export formats. When I sent the design to my cousin who uses CREO PTC, the step files I created imported perfectly!

All my designs are pretty much in 3D these days and I can produce 2D projections when I need to print dimensioned drawings for manufacture etc.

I'm waiting until I've 1) Finished building my CNC machine and 2) Earned so real money with it before investing in Solidworks. But hey I can dream!

Regards
Mike Campbell