More traditional CAD?

I often find myself needing to model sub objects in a more traditional CAD manner. Sometimes Blender is just a little too ‘free form’.

I would need to be able to export these objects from ‘whatever’ and import into Blender, not important in the other direction.

I don’t want subscription software, I need an outright purchase, and I’m wondering what the ‘whatever’ is others might use, and why?

Thanks.

I have been playing around with Freecad, although I haven’t used it enough to give a good opinion of it. It does look like it has a lot of potential and it exports out to obj, stl, ply, and other formats.

http://www.freecadweb.org

Well, more and more software is going to be subscription based and/or cloud enabled/hosted (paid for or otherwise). So it’s best not to paint yourself into a corner, idealogically-speaking.

BricsCAD is still a perpetual license (for now). Relatively inexpensive, very similar to AutoCAD if you’re in the DWG ecosystem. Popular in the CAD community so there’s a lot of support. You might have to walk files through an extra format or two to get it into Blender.

Fusion360 is free for hobbyists and low-profit companies (pay attention to the terms of use). That is better if you’re more in the MCAD/3D printing ecosystem. Not too certain about export formats, if OBJ isn’t available common neutral formats like IGES should be.

If I need CAD to Blender I use MOI3D, it’s fairly intuitive, simple controls and it can export STL and OBJ for direct import into Blender. I found a copy for 200 bucks online and I’ve been very happy with my purchase.