Hoping to strike the right balance between those two issues, Autodesk has begun beta testing AutoCAD Fusion 360, a version of its popular AutoCAD engineering application running in the cloud.

The best 3D modeling software will vary based on your needs, but there plenty of options available, including for free. Here are our favorite software picks.

While these programs certainly helped makers get into 3D modeling, most had serious limitations. Only a few have been truly open-source, and even fewer have been both open-source and parametric.