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http://www.onshape.com I've been messing around with it hoping to get away from tinkercad. Just wondering what other people here thought of it. I like that i can use it on mac or windows and i can work on parts no matter where i am. Thats what i like about tinkercad. I can start a part at work and finish it when i get home.

I like it, it's about 90% of the bits of SolidWorks I actually use, and after some messing around I prefer their take on mates.
Assuming you can live with the "Cloud application" constraints, the only negative for me at this point is the lack of a workable CAM solution, but if your just 3d printing that's largely irrelevant.

you should try fusion 360 its free for hobby, cam/cad together

I took some baby steps to learn it a few weeks ago when DesignSpark's license server crashed. They do have a great online tutorial, so it's definitely something that anyone could teach themself to use. It's a nice interface and has a lot of nice features, but I didn't put enough hours into learning it to have a smooth workflow.

I've tried 360, and though I really like the CAM which is obviously a version of HSM Works, I'm not a fan of the modeling. Thought that's likely more a function of what I'm used to using, rather than OnShape being "better".

I tried it during the beta and if you are already familiar with SolidWorks it is a good fit for you. If not, I would try Fusion 360 (it is awesome now) and is free for Students/Hobby/Makers and if not it's only $300 year.

If you want something purely online, for now, OnShape may be the only game with any decent and serious set of features. Just this morning I received an email from them announcing Drawings, which is great and much needed to help share your design with fabricators.

I tried the OneShape beta and was impressed. I do mechanical design for a living and use mostly NX and SpaceClaim at work. I have also briefly used CATIA, Solidworks, and Pro Engineer in my line of work. But at home I'm a Fusion 360 user because:

* Free. Not free to try, but free free. The only hook is you buy a license if your start-up makes more than $100k/year, and even then the license is a cool $300/year.
* Convenience of the cloud but works offline if needed.
* Runs natively on Mac.
* Integrated CAM (but I haven't tried it)
* Leverages cloud for rendering. So you can make pretty renderings much faster, and without tying up your computer. (This is another hook, you get excellent free cloud rendering but need to pay for even better cloud renderings. You can also render for free on your machine like any other CAD software; if you can stand the wait).
* Basic structural analysis in your machine or in the cloud will be deployed any day now. (Again, you will get much quicker results and don't tie up your computer with analysis. And again another hook for paying to use more than your regular allotment of cloud CPU cycles).
* 1-Button send to Simplify3D
* You can do both parametric and direct modeling on it. Most parametric modeling software have direct modeling capability as an afterthought. Here it is integrated seamlessly.
* Integrated quotes for milling or injection molding your model (but I haven't tried it)
* AND HERE IS THE BIGGIE FOR ME (aside from it being free, and having a native Mac version, and upcoming analysis): As far as I am aware, it is the ONLY Mechanical CAD program that has surfacing technology found in artsy programs like Blender and Maya. So you can actually design consumer goods with flowy shapes on it. This is practically impossible to do in other Mechanical CAD programs. Here's something I'm working on for example: http://a360.co/1X8hqIj
By the way, see how convenient working in the cloud is? You didn't even need to download a viewer to see my model. And if I added you to my project, you could have annotated my model, from your smartphone! (You do need to download their free app for this).

If you have experience in the CAD industry and these features on a free program seem nuts to you, it's because it kind of is. But that is the crazy world we are living in, we might as well embrace it. I think the best way to put it is this:

I can honestly say I would pick Fusion 360 over the $30k software I have access to at work. Fusion just happens to be free, and that's a good thing because I would not have discovered it otherwise.

Thanks for the pointer I was once semi competent with solid modeling (the various incarnations of software created by Tim Oleson of evo-soft.net that right now is sold as Shark FX 9 for me it was mostly the Ashlar Vellum years and before) as that is $2,300 a seat that is not on in my retired situation so I was about to embark on learning OnShape your info has caused me to try Fusion 360 its downloading as I type.
With my fossilized brain function which ever one I end up using (also looking at Strata 7 as I was a beta tester and QA for them in the early 90s so I may retain some memory of its general flow the 7 last version is free (this week if you want the current version 8 its $100 rather than $600)
I will want to stay with and I note that the Fusion 360 license is for a year I hope it will be renewable

Windshadow,

Just to add fuel to the conversation, I also do mechanical design for a living using PTC Creo and am currently using both Fusion360 and OnShape at home. While I still think Fusion 360 is the better package currently, OnShape is growing in functionality pretty quickly and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw it overtake Fusion 360 in the next year or so. If OnShape really becomes the CAD package that it is claiming to want to become, then I will have no problem spending the $100/mo on it in the future. Until then, I'm maintaining Fusion 360 as my primary at-home CAD package unless it is a small one-off project, then I use OnShape to keep testing its functionality as it evolves.