Free Solidworks?

[animus_nero]

Hello, my name is Nero--I guess you could say that I am new to Chief Delphi.

In the past, we've mainly used pen & paper for our designs, despite the fact that we have a fully-equipped CAD lab in our school. We've decided to integrate CAD/CAM/CAE into our engineering process next year.

I've spoken with our CAD teacher, and he recommended we use SolidWorks.

A quick search on Chief Delphi yielded this http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=57957.

Apparently Autodesk offered a student edition free to FIRST teams two years ago.

Is this still available?
If not, can my team procure a free copy somewhere else?

Additionally, are there any online tutorials or training exercises offered on the net?
Which would you recommend?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. We would be using our CAD lab's software, but unfortunately relations between our Head Coach and our CAD teacher are...strained at best