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The company no longer develops Sketchup Make, its free desktop software, but you can download it from Trimble's archives. The SketchUp website offers a really impressive array of video and self-paced training options to help you along the way. Of course, if you're looking to put out detailed designs with accurate sizing and tolerances, you'll need to spend some time learning the ins and outs of the program. Even if you've never done any CAD work or 3D modeling before, you can pull together some really nice presentations in minutes. The interface makes it easy to get up to speed on the basics. SketchUp's free web-based version has plenty of power, but if you need additional functionality, you have to buy SketchUp Pro-and pay a hefty price tag. A lot of the details are clearly more oriented towards products that have few but rather complex parts not so much a woodworking project that mainly consists out of simple boards. Trimble has enhanced it and developed it further and now offers a slew of related products. FreeCAD is an open source software that is mainly geared towards mechanical engineers.
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In 2012, Google sold the product to Trimble. LibreCAD started as a project to build CAM capabilities into the community version of QCad for use with a Mechmate CNC router. SketchUp was originally developed by Google and was one of the greatest free CAD packages ever put on the market. FreeCAD is a free and open-source 3D CAD (computer-aided design) modeler meant for graphic design.
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Free feature is web-only with many important features hobbled.
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