[TriEmbed] Looking for [FOSS CAD] recommendation

[Brian]

Jumping in late on this thread to add my $0.02 about FreeCAD.

It has its issues, a couple of which I'll get into, but I've found it 
the easiest to get used to (obviously a totally personal opinion).

Two big things to be aware of:

1. It's not hard, on a moderately-complex model, to break the model in 
some way ("broken" meaning no longer able to calculate and update the 
result correctly after changes at some intermediate level).  It's best 
to wait to the very end to add fillets and chamfers, for example.

2. Support for multi-body assembly is still extremely limited.  My 
suggestion if you want to construct mechanical systems is to skip 
FreeCAD and go straight to a commercial package.  I use Fusion360 on a 
Windows platform that I fire up for pretty much no other purpose aside 
from gaming.  Fusion360 is free for hobbyists, but is cloud-based, so 
they can pull the plug on you whenever they want (like Alibre did; long 
ago, its hobbyist version was free).

Support on the FreeCAD forums is very good; developer involvement is high.

HTH,
-Brian