The Best CAD Software for FRC (and How to Choose)

If you are picking a CAD tool for your FRC team, here is the short version: the three serious options are Onshape, SolidWorks, and Autodesk Fusion, and all three are free for FIRST Robotics teams. The better question is not which is "best" in the abstract, but which fits how your team actually works.

Why CAD matters in FRC

CAD is how you design a robot before you cut metal. A good model catches interference, lets you check that the arm reaches the right height, and produces drawings the build team can manufacture from. Once you commit to designing in CAD rather than improvising at the bandsaw, the tool you choose shapes how your whole team collaborates for the season. If you are just getting started, the LearnFRC CAD and Design guide walks through the fundamentals before you worry about software.

Onshape: the community default

Onshape is the most widely used CAD platform in FRC, and for good reason. It is cloud-native and runs entirely in a browser, so it works on Chromebooks, Macs, Windows PCs, and even tablets with no install. That matters when half your team is on school laptops you do not control.

Its standout feature is real-time collaboration. Multiple students can open the same document at once and see edits happen live, with tools like Follow Mode and branching and merging for managing changes. Onshape is free for FIRST teams through the Educator Plan, which adds release management and class features.

The ecosystem is the other reason it dominates. Community resources like FRCDesign.org and Onshape4FRC offer full curricula built specifically for FRC, plus parts libraries and the official field models. If you want the smoothest path to getting a rookie productive, Onshape is hard to beat.

SolidWorks: the industry standard

SolidWorks is professional desktop CAD used widely in mechanical engineering, and it is free for FIRST teams through a sponsorship with Dassault Systemes. It is the same software used to design the FRC field and game pieces, so the official CAD lines up natively.

Strengths:

• Extremely powerful, mature feature set used across real engineering jobs.
• Learning it builds a skill that transfers directly to college and industry.
• The sponsorship now includes browser-based cloud apps (like xDesign) plus cloud storage, so you are not strictly tied to one Windows machine.

Trade-offs:

• The full desktop version is Windows-only and needs a reasonably capable computer.
• Setup and license management are more involved than Onshape's sign-up-and-go flow.

If you have mentors who already know SolidWorks, or students aiming at mechanical engineering, the industry transferability is a real advantage.

Autodesk Fusion: strong CAD plus CAM

Autodesk Fusion (formerly Fusion 360) is free for students and educators through Autodesk's education license, and it is also available to FRC teams. It is cloud-connected but installs as a desktop app on Windows and Mac.

Fusion's calling card is integrated CAM, the tooling that turns a model into machine instructions for a CNC router or mill. If your team manufactures parts on a CNC, having design and CAM in one program is genuinely convenient. It is also a comfortable middle ground: more approachable than full SolidWorks, more capable than entry-level tools.

The main caution is that Fusion leans on a single-user file model, so live multi-person editing is weaker than Onshape's. For a large team where many people design at once, that can become a bottleneck.

How to choose

Match the tool to your team, not to a forum opinion:

• Mixed or school-managed computers, lots of new students, heavy collaboration: choose Onshape.
• Mentors who know SolidWorks, students targeting mechanical engineering, Windows machines available: choose SolidWorks.
• You run a CNC and want CAD plus CAM in one place: choose Fusion.

A few honest realities. First, the best CAD software is the one your mentors can actually teach, so existing expertise should weigh heavily. Second, switching mid-season is painful, so pick once and commit. Third, whatever you choose, download the official field and game-piece CAD that FIRST releases each season and design against it, because guessing at dimensions is how robots fail inspection.

There is no universally correct answer here. Onshape is the safe default for most teams because it is free, runs everywhere, and has the deepest FRC-specific learning resources, but SolidWorks and Fusion are excellent in the right hands.

Ready to start modeling? Dig into the LearnFRC CAD and Design guides for step-by-step tutorials on whichever tool you pick.