[DFTF] The Question of CAD

[Joe Johnson]

This is part of a series of posts called Drinking From The Firehose on getting Dr Joe back up to speed on All Things FIRST.

Today's topic:
The Question of CAD

For most teams, I think this solution is more or less preselected for them, but I find myself in a position where I have a lot of pros and cons, but no clear answer.

Relevant Facts:

• I use ProE at iRobot
• I use Alibre in my hobby work at home
• I know SolidWorks tolerably well from a prior life
• I used to be a tolerable UG (now NX) but this was over a decade ago
• My school has NO CAD in the building at all.
• The students on my team have never driven CAD at all (unless you count using AutoCAD at a summer camp in 6th grade)
• I want to have 4-6 kids learn the software and be able to help with the design stage (as well as transmit designs from engineers -- me at present -- to the kids on the build team so they can build stuff to print when the engineers can't be on site)

Thoughts:

• ProE is a pretty heavy lift to learn and over powered for our needs
• Alibre and AutoCAD are pretty easy to learn and powerful enough for our needs but as far as a CAD system to know going forward, seems is a little less useful than other choices.
• SolidWorks seems to be winning in a lot of the market, is plenty powerful, and is easy to pick up (imho)
• I've got no dough, so I am hoping that I can find one of these companies that is willing to allow FIRST teams to have a few licenses on the cheap (as in free if possible)

So... ...what should I do? Thoughts? Other than the AutoDesk licenses that come with the kit (they still come with the kit yes?) are there other CAD software companies that are FIRST friendly?

Thanks in advance.

Joe J.