3D design tools for free

Inspired by an online post,

• Fusion360 : with an "enthusiast licence"
• Maya LT : used in the industry, there seems to be 
• Blender : no, good for art but not for 3D modeling. Save revisions,  save often, save each item so to be able to go to "stl repair" and import objects back. Boolean can kill objects.
• Sculptris for sculptures.
• Thinkercad.com : cool for beginners ?
• Shapr3D / only on an IpadPro ?
• Open Scad : for mechanical modeling or parametric designs ?
• SolidWorks ($$$)
• FreeCAD
• 
  

Blender :

Organic design; modeling/animation/rigging

Fusion 360 :

Technical design, with precise mesures, CAD, timeline / parametric features

cf. youtube Lars Christensen 

3D modeling, some linux links

0 ) How I printed the first models this weekend

(mac OSX, so I could use sketchup...)

http://dailycmd.blogspot.fr/2013/03/3d-printing.html

1 ) I already tried

http://www.openscad.org/
http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2011/01/19/openscad-basics-the-setup/
http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/OpenScad_beginners_tutorial

http://repraprip.blogspot.fr/2011/05/inkscape-to-openscad-dxf-tutorial.html

2 ) other soft doing the same kind of thing (CAD)

http://assimp.sourceforge.net/main_features_formats.html

http://www.blender.org/
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
http://blendernewbies.blogspot.fr/

http://brlcad.org/wiki/Overview

http://sourceforge.net/projects/free-cad/

http://www.sweethome3d.com/

http://www.artofillusion.org/

http://www.k-3d.org/

http://konstruktor.influx.kr/
http://www.ldraw.org/

http://www.gcad3d.org/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/varkon/

3 ) Lists of comparable softwares for 3D modeling / CAD

http://reprap.org/wiki/Useful_Software_Packages
  CAD :
http://reprap.org/wiki/Useful_Software_Packages#Open-source_software
  To deal with STL files :
http://reprap.org/wiki/Useful_Software_Packages#Open-source_software_2

http://www.techdrivein.com/2011/08/8-best-cad-apps-for-linux.html


... so if wine+sketchup doesn't work, there are plenty of other options!