Doing my small part for education today, tomorrow and Friday I'm showing kids in 5th grade Math classes what an engineer can do with 3D software (SolidWorks specifically). I should have anticipated that some would be interested enough to want to thrash around with some 3D applications. I don't really know what to recommend in the way of freeware that won't frustrate a kid, and I don't know whether anyone knows of low-cost student-edition software worthy of trying to obtain for late-elementary school or middle school computer labs . . . or even for parents to buy for home. I personally don't think SolidWorks is appropriate, although it's likely to be as user-friendly as most things out there and more user-friendly than much of it. I figure Inventor and Solid Edge to be about the same story, and not even the student-editions (as far as I know) are cheap enough for most youngsters. Has anybody played around with low-end stuff that's even worth looking at? I know about Rhino3D and SketchUp. Does Alibre have a student edition offering? What about Think3 (or whatever used to be Think3)? What else, and what's it like?
TIA Mark 'Sporky' Stapleton Watermark Design, LLC