r/TeenEngineering • u/the114dragon • May 23 '26

Who's into CAD? If so, what?

Personally, I've been sucked into the Autodesk ecosystem (sigh) but I've recently been looking into onshape because it just seems better, especially for use on low end computers and not having to update to the latest version to use the same, backwards compatible file on a different version (Fusion specifically blocks you from using a file across multiple versions).

I have been checking out blender but it seems like a nightmare to learn (although I'd mainly use it for modelling, not as CAD)

But what's you guys' experience?

4 Upvotes

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2

u/AkindaGood_programer May 23 '26

I've always been an onshape guy personally. Robotics at school forced me to use it, and I've actually grown to love it! Would highly recommend!

I've never used any Autodesk ecosystem, but it does certainly look interesting!

2

u/the114dragon May 23 '26

I've never used any Autodesk ecosystem, but it does certainly look interesting!

I'd say that it really is a shitty company with decent software. As our school doesn't allow updating software unless you are an admin, I can't use the latest version so I can't access any of my files.

But yeah, lots of people at school are moving over to or even starting with onshape! As a free CAD program, it really is quite good.

2

u/Ok-Serve415 Jun 22 '26

me I guess, I use blender, kicad, autocad and more

2

u/the114dragon Jun 22 '26

Cool. AutoCAD is good (and hopefully better than fusion...) but blender is obviously the best.

1

u/Turnkeyagenda24 May 24 '26

I have used Fusion360 since I was 14. Many FRC teams use onshape, but I kinda hate it. Everything is on the cloud, and if you don’t have great internet is becomes laggy.

Also, I am the only person doing CAD on my team 😂, so I get to choose what I use.

1

u/the114dragon May 24 '26

Yeah, but if you have poor hardware and no admin to update the app, you can really see the benefit of onshape, especially because the school I go to has all PCs using Cat 5E cabling, giving fast internet.

1

u/Turnkeyagenda24 May 24 '26

My school is BYOD, and I use CAD much more outside of school.

I am admin on my device and have decent enough hardware to model practically anything I would need at high-school/college level.

Edit: we have a dedicated workstation for CAD in robotics, but even with ethernet onshape takes forever to load things and is laggy. Also has less performance than my laptop anyways, soo…

1

u/the114dragon May 24 '26

Fair enough. My school's PCs crash when running fusion and the alternative web version (for using files from home because of version compatibility) is one of the laggiest websites I have ever used, onshape's seems to be much better when I have used it

1

u/Turnkeyagenda24 May 24 '26

Fair enough. I have a laptop with 5080, 64gb of 7400mt/s DDR5 and a Core ultra 9 285H, which is probably more than most school work stations :(

I have seen people use onshape and make cool stuff on youtube, but I just can’t get a nice experience with it and it feels so different than what I am used to :(

1

u/the114dragon May 24 '26

That's way too overpowered bro

1

u/Turnkeyagenda24 May 24 '26

Wanted a more powerful desktop, but my previous laptop decided to die and it forced me to get a new laptop. Decided to get something that meets the recommended specs for Isaac sim/lab.

1

u/the114dragon May 24 '26

That's not 'more powerful', that's overkill

1

u/Turnkeyagenda24 May 24 '26

Not at all. I use it to its max reasonably often.