FreedCAD allows you to modify your design more easily by stepping back into your model history and changing the needed parameters.Its extensive toolset can be extremely helpful for mechanical engineering experts, architects, and product designers. There was a Mac version of SolidWorks, which would have allowed you to use your training, but they discontinued it a few years ago.FreeCAD software for Mac is an easy-to-use and highly customizable parametric 3D modeler for CAx, CAE, CAD, MCAD, and PLM created primarily to design real-life objects of any size. Windows users have the world available to them when it comes to CAD apps. Unfortunately, Mac users have fewer options. Moi3D is another freeform nurbs modeler, that is lower cost than Rhino, but doesn't have an integrated photoreal renderer, and a smaller user base, so not so much for learning materials. Other CAD apps like TurboCAD, or Cobalt, or CorelCAD are available, but have smaller user bases, so training materials are going to be limited.

FreeCAD can model precisely, but 'ease of use' isn't exactly its strong suit. There are, of course, other players that will work on Mac, but they may not tick all your boxes. (I have a brother at a furniture manufacturer and there are some Rhino users there, among other apps.)Īll of those have some level of rendering, but sometimes, people will export from a CAD app and render in a standard (poly) 3D application, as more effort is really expended on those renderers. If you want nurbs precision, but aren't as worried about exactly constraining the design - you might go for a more freeform nurbs modeler like Rhino. For the Mac, you've got apps like Fusion360 and OnShape for easier to use parametric CAD with lots of training materials available. If you want models that are precise enough to mill, you'd want to work in a CAD / Nurbs application. It's meant to make objects that 'look' good, but aren't meant to be shapes and surfaces that are necessarily perfectly mathematically precise. The thing is that programs like Blender or Cinema4D have great rendering capability, but their modeling is polygon based.

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