What software do you use for 3D design, simulation and sketching?

[Lost resistor]

There are just so many programs for 3D design, some fore more "artistic" stuff, and some for engineers. But i have no idea what to choose.

Im asking here because i'm myself interested mainly in electronics, this is just a side thing to add to my electronics projects. Like designing and building boxes, enclosures, ect. building coil winding machine or something else. Hence why im asking here and not on some engineering forum, because i assume you will have much better understanding of my situation.

I also dont have a 3D printer, so i dont need software for that. Most of the thing i build are going to be from wood. So i just need some software to go from idea to something "concrete", a way to determine exact dimensions and shape, so that i would know what material i need and how to realize that project.

For example, i want to build pentograph machine for etching. So i need software to determine dimensions and shape. But also to simulate it working, in order to determine how it will move, how will changing its dimensions change the scale of etching compared to a drawing, and so on.

Thanks in advance!

[NivagSwerdna]

Fusion360

[MasterBuilder]

I used to use a combination of Sketchup and Inkscape. Typical workflow was, after layout of PCB import it to inkscape and do 2D stuff like layout of a front panel.
If I needed to do 3D stuff then I moved to Sketchup. This combination seemed to suit my simple needs and was free and easy to use. 

I think you could make your enclosures, etc. in some software like Draftsight.

Solidworks, Fusion360, etc. is for the MechEs IMO

[spudboy488]

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/mechanical-software

I haven't had a need to use it for a while but it might be worth a look....and it's free.

[Doctorandus_P]

I will never again let myself being locked in by vendor specific software.
On top of that there is a trend to subscription based software and programs that only work in the mist.

Just juck to all of them.

That pretty much only leaves the FOSS applications for me, and for mechanical CAD, FreeCAD is one of the very few options, and it works reasonably well. It has not reached version 1.0 yet (and rightly so). Traditionally V1.0 is considered the first workable "release" version of a program, and FreeCAD has a few too many rough edges for that, but it is a quite usable program.

Recently I did a little test, and exported a PCB, complete with all 3D models from KiCad in STEP format, and then imported it in FreeCAD to draw a fitting enclosure around it, and it worked pretty well on the first try.

If you do a picture search on both KiCad and FreeCAD you'll get some idea of what others do with it:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kicad+freecad&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images

[Oleander]

I use VariCAD for designing metal enclosures, and it fits well my needs in that subject.
Price is not high (~700 EUR), and there are versions for Linux and Windows.

[Pack34]

I've been liking OnShape since it forces everything to be public and there's nothing to install.

[CatalinaWOW]

Fusion360 is by far the best in the free world.  But it is cloud software with the drawbacks that come with that, and who knows if it will always be free for hobby use.

I use FreeCAD.  User interface and features not up to Fusion360, and it has the drawbacks of GNU software - developers may lose interest or go some weird direction, but it is downloadable, local and if it is good enough for you now you can use it forever.

[sandalcandal]

I use Solidworks for professional stuff and fusion360 for hobby stuff outside work. I've also used openSCAD for some funky parametric models. Some people also try use Blender to make models for 3D printing but it's not really suited to engineering type 3D CAD models. I knew a guy in uni that made stuff in zbrush which looked horribly inefficient to say the least.

I'd also recommend fusion360 especially for anyone just getting into 3D CAD since it has an excellent clean UI and it's free for non-commercial use. It also includes tools for doing motion studies which you seem to want. Onshape is also quite good (and free for non-commercial) if you need something more powerful akin to Solidworks but probably not required for what it sounds like you need.