Is Blender the Best 3D Design Tool or Are There Better Alternatives?

I grew up using Blender so I'm a little biased, but I don't think you'll find free tools with a better community. Maya and 3ds max are arguably better than Blender at the very high levels, but if you're just getting started, Blender is a good place to begin.

I made a 'quickstart' tutorial series aimed at people with zero 3d experience to get my friends up & running asap, you might get some value out of it:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWcWF5z1egpJ_8feBE94pY8aq...

I tried a different approach than popular tutorials like the donut because I try to demystify some of the dry stuff up front that I think people get hung up on. The videos are all fairly short so that it will hopefully be an easily digestible way to really open the door for people on blender.

I have not had problem which cannot be solved with Openscad. Except those cases when the object is 3D-scanned and then I use Blender.

At one particular case I had a scanned model but I remade the same thing in Openscad and checked that those two match visually in Blender.

There are Openscad generators, but they do not try to find any fancy algorithms, they just map the surface. But oneday somebody makes real Openscad scanner.

If you think that taking a more generative and procedural approach to 3D Design sounds interesting I highly recommend taking a look at Rhino3D and Grasshopper (www.rhino3d.com). At €1k it is not really affordable, but it's still worth downloading the demo and trying out Grasshopper to get to play with a different way of doing 3D design.

For anything that is primarily made of flat surfaces or simple geometry, FreeCAD's realthunder edition is far easier to use, because the interface is based on 2D sketches and requires a lot less thinking and interacting in 3D, and you don't do a lot of precision mouse work dragging things into place, just approximations you constrain with numbers.

Although that might actually be a negative, because it doesn't teach you the methods you'll need for more organic shapes.

If you are looking just for a 3D modeler that's easier to use than Blender, there's Wings 3D (https://www.wings3d.com) which is also free and open source.

Even though Blender can technically do just about anything, purpose built software like Marvelous Designer or Substance Painter make life a lot easier and allows for better looking work much faster.

But that costs a lot of money that someone may not have, which is the beauty of Blender being free and awesome.

Fusion 360’s free non-commercial plan is a much softer learning curve than Blender. It doesn’t handle nearly all the situations that Blender can, but if you’re designing products for eventual manufacture, it’s worth trying.