3D software beyond SketchUp

[Steven]

I've been modeling a 3D model of the 2014 rules in sketchup, but trying to fit a car in that had made me hit a few limitations of sketchup, such as rendering a surface around curves.

I'm curious what would be the easiest step-up from this. Any experiences?
I tried autocad because I have experience with that a while ago, but I cannot figure out how it works with 3D models.

One additional note though... any ideas how to make images of a Sketchup model without the cream background color? Just white would be much better.

[Kiril Varbanov]

Blender is the first choice that comes to mind, although I don't have much experience with it.

In previous versions of SketchUp the background color settings were located under Window -> Styles.

[astracrazy]

in sketchup up have you tried plugins?

curviloft and round corner are the two I use. My models look much better for using them. Theres also a render program to render your models - kerkythea

with them three you can make very good models

I've tried blender but found it much harder than sketchup. http://sketchucation.com/forums/ is a good place to get some plugins etc. Its amazing the type of plugins available.

[SectorOne]

I need to take a look at those plugins because if you can do this above then all i can say is mother of god...

[A13EX_f]

you could always try solidworks it's quite easy to learn obviously not free but if you find someone else with a copy there is a licencing loophole where you can have two machines (one work and one "home")

[rjsa]

Rhino 3D. With T-Splines if possible.

[krisfx]

you could always try solidworks it's quite easy to learn obviously not free but if you find someone else with a copy there is a licencing loophole where you can have two machines (one work and one "home")

A Solidworks license is ~ £10,000 apparently haha.

[Richard]

Rhino is a great combination with Grasshopper for parametric modelling. It's also very easy to combine with scripting.

[Greg Locock]

Tomba what do you actually want to get out of this? proper surfaces for use in CFD etc or just something that looks nice? If the latter then rhino or blender are designed for the job, I think.

[Richard]

Rhino is expensive. (As it happens we use it to build CFD models before passing into Harpoon for meshing, then into ANSYS.)

If it's just illustrative then sketch-up with a plug-on would be best?

[rjsa]

Rhino reselers are really flexibe about getting student copies for hobysts, a whole lot of courses will qualify, worth trying.

[A13EX_f]

you could always try solidworks it's quite easy to learn obviously not free but if you find someone else with a copy there is a licencing loophole where you can have two machines (one work and one "home")

A Solidworks license is ~ £10,000 apparently haha.

seriously I think we got it for around £3600 when we got it at work, (we do exhibition stands not racing cars but I've done a bit of work with it in my spare time and know it would be capable of making something that looks good),

I do know there are pirate versions about with enough digging.

[Kiril Varbanov]

An update to this old thread - just ran into Clara.io - http://clara.io

Powerful, full-featured 3D modeling and rendering app that runs in your browser. Free.

Note: I haven't had the time to test it yet, just an early share.