Once agin I’ll say get 2d out of mind most 3 d cad will be able to creat the best 2 d drawings possible you could project any views necessary most also have automatic dimensioning . Occasionally you might have to delete double dim. Al can output to any format needed at worst you may edit the drawing title page but once done you never need to do it again
3D means additive and subtractive modeling just as you might create in the machine shop you can view progress from any position including from the inside . You can create a note page for any special notes you need little geometry other than relations of how features interact you can even make models that can’t really be made other than by printing the only real reason to make drawings is if you are having something made that can’t be cnc by the shop you don’t bring the 3D sketches that’s why you create a not page defining materials call it bill of materials in 2d . You don’t even realy need calculator cad will go out to at least 14 decimal places or more You can use any numeric system often simotaianeous ly metric to English you can even use light years or angstroms any system can instantly converted you need no tri angles scales compasses dividers tee square drafting machine . Not even a big table I use my laptop computer in a laptop hard table only big enough to hold the computer and space to operate mouse . I use my TV FOR SCREEN AS I don’t SEE WELL resolution is not as good but it doesn’t matter you can check for integrity with a click . With solid works I can also do structural analysis so Roarks book is on the shelf now too I still use Machinery manual to look things up But the cad tool box provides al thread sizes and appropriate counter sink counter bores and you can edit this for specials if needed if you label correctly you can generate a complete bill of materials including fasteners you can easily get volumes surface areas center of gravity and interferences you can define what is interference you can get finished weight too. So 3 d is very useful and worth the time learning if you are into shading you can use about any color you want you can change material and everything related will up date
Solid Works is a great program, however; is isn't cheap and you add cost for every significant additional major capacity like analysis and CNC. The 2D capacity is good, been a long time since I had a seat on SW. You get something for your money.
But I do not make a penny from using a cad software. That is why I chose freeCAD. Yep not as good in any area but for the price a real real advantage. Is it harder to create models if you need drafts and other of the very fine features. Using surfaces to create solids has never been great. I haven't tried to build something complex enough that surfaces is the only way. I know it is always improving but can not place it in a comparison to commercial cad. In general every program will have thing it can not do or does poorly so you will need to learn work arounds. They are much slower in fixing on free software. But freeCAD has a big enough base that everything I found is fixed since a lot of programmers to work to improve the software. Also these programmers add major capacity and add on small features.
After using about a half dozen cad programs of which half are commercial like solid works I would say basically the process is the same. So the learning difficulty is similar. There are two system when adding or cutting bodies. One retains a history and you many have to go back and fix things. Also the list can be very long and difficult to deal with. The second is to throw all the history away each time you save. This is sometimes an advantage but equally it can be a disadvantage. I have no winner. Since you can find a spot on the list and throw away what comes after. Hacking at the model that need a lot of changes is difficult and time consuming. I saved models as I went along to have a better start point when history was lost.
The final issue is the size of the market. I think Solid Works has the largest share overall and the larges of the purchased software. FreeCad has the larges open source free cad and is larger then many of the purchased software. Neither are going away. Next is training. I am not sure about Solid Works but I do know that they do have staff support and likely a good video library and others locally use it. FreeCAD has a huge youtube library that will cover everything under the sun. Sufficient time has passed since the big step change that even this library is now large. So if you can learn from youtube then your going to make it. I am not sure how you find a local expert.
