I’ve been looking for software that will let me make some nice 3D objects for students to play with. I like doing 3D geometry, but in the Math for El Ed class, we spend one day a week in the lab, and sometimes it seems like it’s wasted because 3D is so hard to come by. Anyway, I’ve found a couple I like. One is Cabri 3D. Cabri is the main competitor to Geometers Sketchpad, and has been for years, so they have a nice slick product, and I finally got around to looking at their demo. It took me a while to figure out the interface (I kept making points that I wanted to be free points, but it turned out were points in the x-y plane, but I eventually got that straightened out and I’m liking it better all the time). Anyway, I think I see a grant application in my future perhaps (to get a site license). I could afford a 1-year license myself, but….
I’ve spent my afternoon here, playing with other options, and most of them are just not quite as good (WinGeom is free, but clunky, for instance).
The big surprise, however, is that you can do a lot with Google’s free software SketchUp, that’s made for making models of houses and such.
I had to watch about 4 of the training videos, but after that I was pretty please with what I could do.
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