ORIGINAL: Hemikiller
ORIGINAL: Roguedog
Solidworks is the next one I see people talking about using on RCU. No idea on the cost of the full Solidworks or Autocad.
Solidworks was $6,000 for a single license. Annual maintenance is around $1300. The SW student editions are only licensed for 2 years, IIRC. Autocad pricing is similar...
I have been in negociation with both Solidworks, and AutoDesk over SW and Inventor. I can get both down to about $5k. Inventor has a slight edge since they will bundle it with AutoCAD 2009, and Revit for the same price. Like a couple of others have said, If you can get a student discount -about $350 for Inventor and ACAD- less for Solidworks- go for it.
I have tried TurboCAD and can say that it works. It will do most of the stuff you would ever want AutoCAD to do for you, but half as fast.
I am planning on starting my own consulting buisness. $5k is probably more than an amature would want to spend. My ''day job'' is in architecture, which is where AutoCAD's market has moved to in the last 10 yeara or so. That is why Inventor is atractive to me, as it gives me versatitlty to do Arch' stuff with AutoCAD, as well as manufacturing design, which is what Inventor and Solidworks are good for.