For me, Google video search, Google books (Internet Archive is good, but doesn’t always have the same stuff), Adobe InDesign (but in the process of learning LaTeX), and Typewise. As for the Google stuff, I liked Whoogle a lot, but almost all their instances seem to have been blocked or shut down. Also, apologies if this is repeating an earlier post.
FreeCAD is the best FOSS program I know for solid modeling. Librecad works for 2D.
Man, I tried to learn FreeCAD, but coming from the Inventor/Solidworks paradigm it was hard.
I used to use Solidworks and NX some. I think there are similarities. That is sketch based. I admit though, not really learned FreeCAD either. On my list some day.
There is also ondsel, which is basically freecad with some polish maybe. It looks the same to me. But one day when they solve the topology renaming thing and when they have an interface that’s not openly hostile I’d love to try it
I would agree that FreeCAD is the best, but it’s not slick and doesn’t feel particularly robust. Don’t get me wrong, I have no rose tinted glasses on when it comes to Solidworks, but it’s generally very usable and very powerful.
Actually Solidworks is consider low to mid market. NX and whatever PTC calls their high end now are the main stream CAD systems as far as I know.
I worked with Creo for years, and ProE before that. I still have nightmares about the cascading unresolved reference screens. I’ve never used NX, but my understanding is it is AAA, though not super user friendly by default. I’ve pretty much exclusively used Solidworks for over a decade now, and I have to say that it’s generally pretty well behaved, and I’ve never really found I couldn’t do what I wanted to in it. Thus it has become my crutch.
Nice thing about Solidworks is I think is used the ACIS kernel. Means it is directly compatible with a lot of other software.