CAD software

[Basecircle]

What types of CAD software do you guys tinker with? Anything free or cheap to just play around with? I’m not looking to design or build anything crazy, just looking for an alternative to trying to draw things to scale in a notebook to work out ideas or understand some different concepts. In a perfect world I’d like to be able to animate the motion of a rear suspension with bar placement changes, but in reality just being able to draw it easily as a ride height vs dynamic would be great.

[Rosenbluth]

Autodesk has a subscription deal where you can buy it by the month...I use Inventor and Solidworks, but it is provided by my work.

[outlaw4j]

I used to have an older 2D program called Vellum. Worked great for working out angles and whatnot. Really good for making brackets with proper radius multi hole mounts and whatnot. If you have access to a laser you can create dxf's that can be used, other wise you can print and use as templates

[TS3g]

If you join EEA for $40 a year (or $90 for 3 years), you can obtain a Solidworks Student license for "free."

https://www.eaa.org/eaa/eaa-membership/eaa-member-benefits/solidworks-resource-center/eaa-solidworks-standard