I think I’m gonna have to set up a laptop in my garage and follow some youtube videos while I learn.
I envy you. I really need to become proficient in a mainstream 3D CAD program. I’ve spent a few days trying already... Its just so alien to me. Usually I’m pretty good at figuring stuff like that out.
At my last job I trained our new drafters and engineers on solidworks, between YouTube, the tutorial built into solidworks and Google its not pretty easy to learn.
Between all the 3d modeling programs I've used over the years, solidworks, inventor, UG, pro/e (cero 2.0), bunch of others, I feel solidworks is one of the easier ones to learn, inventor is pretty much the same, just have to learn where the buttons are and what inventor calls the commands. Solidworks does frame weldments better but it's all what you get use to and use more often. If you start using solidworks id be happy to help.