So i have recently begun learning jewelry design using blender since there are a lot of videos on it out there but i have this sneaking suspicion i should be learning CAD instead... Thoughts?
If you're learning jewelry design, I'd like to point you towards Rhino, which is popular in the jewelry design community. It's not OSS, but since you're learning, I'll point out that they have a generous educational discount.
There are CAD packages specific to the jewelry industry, they really speed up the work. If you are wanting to do it professionally I'd look into learning those.
Source - Dad was a master jeweler and my parents ran a shop for nearly 40 years
They are both useful skillsets. CAD is nice when you want to manufacture your end result, but you have to think more about constraints and parameters up front.
It's mostly the cost aspect that is preventing me from even exploring the jewelry CAD options... Matrix Gold which is apparently the preeminent CAD software in the jewelry industry... Costs a few thousand dollars and only runs on Windows... Both of which are completely out of touch with my open source Linux setup.
It's really surface vs. volume representations. Blender, Maya, and most 3D graphics programs, define surfaces. Modern 3D CAD programs such as FreeCAD, Fusion, and SolidWorks use constructive solid geometry, where everything is a volume. There are exceptions - SketchUp was a constructive solid geometry program, and original AutoCAD was just lines.
The big difference comes when you combine objects or operate on them. Surface-based programs are not that good at combining surfaces. CSG-based programs have to be really good at combining volumes, including subtracting from them. This requires a very difficult geometry program underneath.
