- A Virtual Engineering/Science Laboratory Course resource for engineering instruction. Please see http://www.jhu.edu/~virtlab/virtlab.html.
- freeCAD is a basic 3D CAD with state of the art Motion Simulation capabilities. It is suitable for anyone interested in learning 3D CAD and Motion Simulation for free before upgrading to commercial packages. Educators will find it ideal for the teaching of dynamics, machine design and physics. It runs on Windows, Macintosh PPC (beta) and Linux PC (beta). It is a freeware which is sponsor supported. Releases will be made quarterly.
freeCAD allows users to create and manipulate assemblies, which are collections of 3D parts. The parts are 3D solids, which can be connected by joints, constraints, contacts, actuators, springs, dampers or forces. The parts and connections define the structure or mechanism that the assembly is meant to represent. 'freeCAD' can perform full Multibody Dynamics analysis on the assembly to predict the motion according to Newton's Laws. Animation using the simulated data produces realistic dynamic behavior of the system under study.
Users can also obtain engineering data in the form of plots and tabular output. Data series available include linear and angular displacements, velocities, accelerations, forces, torques, momenta and kinetic energies. Acceleration data include transverse, centripetal and Coriollis accelerations. Users can view forces and torques from joints, constraints, actuators, springs, dampers, applied forces and inertia.
FreeCAD 3D CAD with Motion Simulation might be of interest to you. If so, please see http://www.askoh.com for information and download.