I've dabbled in 3d modeling for ... Oh, about 20 years now. I just got a Makerbot Replicator 2 last week, so now I have a legitimate use for it and I'm really excited to start designing things and making them real. I'm sure I'll do some amount of work in a subdivision modeler, but there's a certain amount of industrial design type work that I'll want a more CAD-like program for. I've been sampling the options this week and 123D has a pretty good workflow, but is a little too simple. I haven't managed to wrap my head around Cubify Invent or Design (Used to be Alibre). I can see how they're good if you have exact specs to build from, but if you want to do a little experimentation and more artistic workflow, they seem ... Stifling.

So I googled once more for 3d cad programs and discovered a list that included MOI. And I've only played with it for a few minutes tonight but I have very high hopes. It seems to have the combination of precision that I'll want when I'm doing things like designing a pop-up shade for my camera's LCD, but also lets me do things like move objects around freely when I want to design some interesting shapes and experiment a bit. I've only watched 2 tutorial videos so far, but I'm loving what I'm seeing. I'm also happy to see that a version 3 is coming along so the product hasn't been abandoned.

I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions but for right now things are making sense and I'm excited to spend some more time with it. If it's everything I hope it is, I'm going to have a big THANK YOU for making it because there doesn't seem to be anything like it out there, at least not in its price range.

Also, when I registered for the forum it took me to a 404 page after I completed the registration. (for example, http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&final_uri=post.php%253Fwebtag%253DMOI&continue=Continue)