Solid modelling software is very hard to build, and FreeCAD, SolveSpace and OpenSCAD feel like they are built by hobbyists who had heard of CAD but not actually used it talked to anyone who had.
Solidworks for makers was kind of hard to find but free until recently. Now it's $99 per year. Of course, you can't use it for commercial work past a certain point. It kind of seems like it's dying as well, they are going all in on cloud but their cloud product is terrible.
I'm a Mech E (well, originally anyway), do hobby stuff and sometimes I do side jobs. I now use and recommend Solid Edge even though it's not as nice to use as Solidworks. It's free for hobby use, and something like $90/month when you want to use it commercially. You can pay for the license one month at a time.
Solidworks is about $4000 to buy and then $2000 to maintain the license. You can keep using the version you bought, but eventually you have to upgrade in order to work on files with someone else, or to fix a breaking bug, like when 1-2 year old versions were unusable with HiDPI displays. Previous versions get no updates, period. When this happens and you need to upgrade, you have to backpay all of maintenance license fees you didn't pay, or start over again with a new $4000 license.
Solidworks for makers was kind of hard to find but free until recently. Now it's $99 per year. Of course, you can't use it for commercial work past a certain point. It kind of seems like it's dying as well, they are going all in on cloud but their cloud product is terrible.
I'm a Mech E (well, originally anyway), do hobby stuff and sometimes I do side jobs. I now use and recommend Solid Edge even though it's not as nice to use as Solidworks. It's free for hobby use, and something like $90/month when you want to use it commercially. You can pay for the license one month at a time.
Solidworks is about $4000 to buy and then $2000 to maintain the license. You can keep using the version you bought, but eventually you have to upgrade in order to work on files with someone else, or to fix a breaking bug, like when 1-2 year old versions were unusable with HiDPI displays. Previous versions get no updates, period. When this happens and you need to upgrade, you have to backpay all of maintenance license fees you didn't pay, or start over again with a new $4000 license.