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Blender. Not great at it, but there's so many fantastic tutorials on YouTube. I can use it good enough to design and 3d print simple things. Of course, there's may aspects / layers to it. It's both broad and deep. So it's good to kind of focus on one thing at the time, and then break that down even further.
I’ve been wanting to learn blender for the same reason. Complicated models are an absolutely bitch to work with in parasolid modeling engines.
However, for simple designs, parasolid modeling is spectacular for designing models for printing. Fusion360 has a free tier for hobbyists (they hide it and you have to go hunting to find it, but it exists), and I’ve done most of my designs there.
I’ve also used tinkercad for really simple edits. I’ve heard great things about solidworks, but it’s expensive af, even for a hobbyist account.
Not sure exactly what you consider 'expensive', but there are ways to get a student edition Solidworks account for $100/year. I consider that a pretty reasonable price.
Personally, I find it infinitely more usable than Blender, but that may just be my personal biases in play. Your mileage may vary.
That’s absolutely reasonable, but I’m not a student. Is that required by the license agreement?
Easily fixable. What you do is go to the Titans of CNC Academy and sign up. Congratulations; you are now technically a student! When purchasing the Student Edition from Dassault, you'll be asked what your educational institution is; "Titans of CNC Academy" is an accepted answer.
Then you can head over to Titans' sales page and pick up an annual student license. (Make sure you're getting the Student version and not the cruddy "3DExperience for Makers". That's Solidworks' cloud-based software, and is a hot mess.)
The major downside to this is that files created in the student edition are watermarked as such, and will open with a warning if you try on a professional-licensed version of SW. You should be able to still 3D print for personal hobby purposes, but it is against the license to make money off of it.