Free highly capable 3D drawing/design program.
Free for private and all commercial use without limitation.
"Talks" to many 3D printers.
Should allow production of models for eg injection moulding.

For those with minimal interest in "engineering" it will still be
useful - an intuitive high capability 3D dwg program that will read
(but not write) Sketchup files and that may well become the Sketchup
defacto free replacement. And the Space-Marine / bunny rabbit / widget
/ phone-holder / ... that you draw for visualisation purposes may be
able to be produced by a low cost 3D printer.

Download here, plus tutorial links.
Win32, Win64,440 MB, >=3D WIN XP sp3

      http://www.designspark.com/eng/page/mechanical

Import / Export major industry standard 3D languages.
Major+ for me:  Can reads STL files and can export designs in STL
format (yeeha!)
Whether it is compatible enough with eg Solidworks to allow exchange
of files between them is TBD, but it should allow people to produce
drawings for eg injection molding fabrication.

EETimes writeup here (worthwhile)
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=3D1319478


                     Russell
________________

Free highly capable 3D drawing/design program.

Said to be highly intuitive and capable.

Import: ECAD (IDF, IDB, EMN) files, OBJ, SketchUp, STEP, and STL file forma=
ts;
Export: AutoCAD (DXF), OBJ, 3DPDF, STL, XAML, JPEG, and PNG file formats.

STL !!!

Models:
[EE Times]:    You can create individual parts or full-blown
assemblies. In addition to your enclosures, you can import 3D models
of electronic components, electro-mechanical devices, circuit boards,
and so forth. But where do you get these models? Well, the folks who
are bringing DesignSpark Mechanical to us --Allied Electronics and RS
Components -- have 38,000 3D models as part of their online catalog.
Each of these free-to-use models is available in 24 different formats,
which means they work with just about every 3D design package in the
known universe. Furthermore, the folks at TraceParts.com boast 100+
million 2D drawings and 3D models that can also be freely accessed and
used in your designs.
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