CAD, BIM & 3D

A nice freeware application, which allows you to mix and match mesh geometry from different models. The video displays it better than I could in a short text. Maybe the mesh topology (the clean edges and aligned series of edges) will suffer from it, but as a sculptural approach to modeling with library objects, it seems to function really well and smart. Freely available but Windows-only. Or to use the description from the owner: meshmixer is an experimental 3D modeling tool developed by Ryan Schmidt, a computer graphics researcher at the University of Toronto who is also responsible for ShapeShop and some other stuff .

If you like to test unreleased applications, you can apply for the free beta-test of "Shark" by Punch! Available for Windows and OSX. Shark is the "professional" CAD application while ViaCAD is a much cheaper "consumer" version. Check both as you might have enough tools at your disposal with ViaCAD. And if you are on OSX, it is good to know, since not too many CAD applications run on this OS. Apply on the punchcad blog .