Hello Christopher,

have a look at FreeCAD (sourceforge). It's still under development, but some things are working. It won't working on Macs. There is an interesting Assembly2-Module in development that allows studies for your part positions. I don't know if it fits to your requirements.

Good luck
Karsten

Hello Christopher,

I haven't used it but I know when I was looking to purchase Rhinoworks to add some parametric functionality to Rhino I ran across BriscCAD since the company that used to develop Rhinoworks currently concentrates on their core CAD product. It looks interesting as a 2D/3D hybrid modeler and is right under $1K to purchase, you might look into it as an option that at first glance seems to fit your basic requirements.

Definitely check out ViaCAD Pro. Quite capable and only $250.

And it's a nice supplement to MoI!

http://www.punchsoftware.com/p-103-punch-viacad-pro-v9.aspx

Hi Christopher,

Here is another option that you might want to consider, Formz. It meets all your options:

http://www.formz.com/

And some videos:
https://www.youtube.com/user/formz3D/videos

I just got an email about a sale on it thru the end of April $220 off ($775) :
http://www.cadgarage.com/formz36modeler.html?utm_source=formZ+8+April+Special+-++APR+2015&utm_campaign=fZ+8+APR+special&utm_medium=email

And a 30 day free trial version:
http://www.formz.com/home/trialLanding.html

HTH

Hey Mark,

I tried out ViaCAD Pro 9 awhile ago. I really liked it, but it was incredibly unstable for me. It crashed so often, and during the simplest of operations. With MOI I've never had a crash. What was your experience?

Thank you all so much for your feedback! You've given me much to look into!

I REALLY hope I end up working with MOI 'cause I like its UI very much (mostly). And its simplicity is quite endearing. Michael, if you were to add dimensions, labels, drawing scales, and "views" to MOI, I would just stop searching here. Indeed, I'd pay a lot more than $300!

Cheers,
Christopher

Thanks! This link takes me a page where I can only buy ViaCAD. Do you know of a way to get the (seemingly) standard 30-day trial?

Why put measures inside Moi as you can put them inside DesignSpark Mechanical for free ? ;)
http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6186.1

System of components / Inferences or more geometric visual exotic volume / surfaces functions will be more vital in my opinion! :)

What about "and views" ? There are not yet present ?

By "views", I mean an entity in a CAD program that stores:
* 3D perspective
* zoom level
* active layers (some of which containing labels and dimensions)
* printing options

Maybe there is already this in MOI. As I said, I'm new. :-)

Hi Christopher,

> By "views", I mean an entity in a CAD program that stores:
> * 3D perspective
> * zoom level
> * active layers (some of which containing labels and dimensions)
> * printing options
>
> Maybe there is already this in MOI. As I said, I'm new. :-)

Sorry no that's not available in MoI right now - currently MoI is focused primarily on just the modeling and drawing part of things and not on annotation and printing stuff.

But I do expect to be adding those in the future. There was a step towards this functionality in MoI v3 with a new feature to export hidden line drawings to 2D drawing formats like PDF, AI, and DXF files which does make it easier to use MoI in combination with a 2D CAD program for adding the annotations.


re: ViaCAD trial looks like that is here:
http://www.punchcad.com/trial.aspx

- Michael

For measures you have also this free one! ;)
just import your model inside

Thanks! Onshape looks awesome!

Hi Frenchy !
When i test onShape, i can't see : create Drawing
see my screenshot
thanks

In fact createDrawing in onShape is coming soon ! not yet !!!
too bad !