Good CAD program to start with??

I have been using Fusion 360 and like it. I know nothing about cad software but have found Fusion to be easy to use once you play around with it. Being a hobbiest the software is free to use.

 

there are ways to get autodesk program 'free' (as an engineering student, I get pretty much the whole suite for 3 years ) .. programs like Inventor and SolidWorks aren't very newbie freindly ... hell experienced CAD people still have swearing sessions with both hahah... but once you figure their sequence and squirks they get fairly fluid fast... and both have training programs which seem really silly and dry but make alot of sense about 3/4 of the way through the series

 

Another alternative, especially for 3d printing, is OpenSCAD. It's cross platform and open source. It is *VERY* different from most of the options people have mentioned so far though. It's not sketch based. It's not NURBS. One uses code to create geometry. I love it, but some people hate it. It's kind of like Blender in that respect. It is easy to make things parametric and reuse what you and other people have already built.

 

I don't see autodesk, auto cad, or Pro/e in the apple app store. any suggestions?

 

Look for Fusion360, if it isn't in the app store you can get it from autodesk's website.

 

You will find it at autodest fusion 360.