GOOD CAD PROGRAMS:
Rhino (Rhinoceros 3D) price: $790 (Students and teachers save up to 80%.)
Moment of Inspiration (Moi3D) price: $279
Autodesk Alias Surface price: $22,680 for 3 years
Modo 10.2 price: $1,799
KeyCreator standard price: $2,620
Autodesk Fusion 360 Ultimate price: $4500 for 3 years
Autodesk AutoCAD price: $4,252.50 for 3 years
Onshape standard price: $1500 for 1 year
CATIA base price: $9,000
Creo (Pro/ENGINEER) price: $4995
Autodesk Inventor Professional price: $5105 for 3 years
NX Unigraphics price: $7,500
ICEM Surf price: $2,300
Ansys SpaceClaim price: $2250 for 1 year
Solidworks price: $3995 - $7,995
Solid Edge base price: $4,000
Autodesk 3ds Max price: $3,970 for 3 years
Autodesk Maya (best animation program) price: $3,970 for 3 years
Houdini (best visual effects program*) price: $6,995
Cinema 4D price: $3695
Carrara 8.5 price: $149.95
solidThinking Evolve price (with dongle): $1,929
GOOD RHINO PLUGINS AND RELATED PROGRAMS:
XNurbs plugin (smooth blending of NURBS surfaces; algorithm is based on minimum energy) price: $295
Bongo plugin (animates rigid objects) price: $415 (Rhino+Bongo = $1,205)
OctaneRender plugin (best renderer**) price: $589
Flamingo plugin (mediocre renderer, but makes good trees and shrubs) price: $419
RhinoMESH plugin (cleans up meshes) price: $1000
Mesh2Surface plugin (semi-automatic convertion of scan data into NURBS) price: $1,409
Rhino3DPRINT plugin, price: $1,000
RhinoCAM 2017 plugin (for milling machines) price: $8,000
madCAM 5.0 5Xtra plugin (for milling machines) price: $5,995
Affinity Photo (Photoshop clone) price: $40
iClone 7 (animates people) price: no import/export = $199, import only = $398, import and export = $698
ZBrush (best sculpting program) price: $699
Sculptris is free program for making 3D sculptures.
PowerDirector (best destructive video editor***) price: about $100
Avid Media Composer (best non-destructive video editor***) price: $1,799 for 1 year
*Examples of visual effects (abbreviated VFX): explosions, flames, morphing, rain, water flow.
**OctaneRender runs exclusively on Nvidia’s CUDA graphics cards.
***Non-destructive editing is a form of audio, video or image editing where the original content is not degraded in the course of editing.