RS Components release of DesignSpark Mechanical seems like fairly big news if you’re interested in bridging the gap between PCB design and having a real product.   Eventually you’ll need to put your PCB inside something, and you’ll typically need some CAD software to do that if you want more than one instance!

There are a number of 3D design programs out there, both commercial and open source, but DesignSpark Mechanical is based on SpaceClaim, which grabbed my attention since I know one or two people using this and they’ve generally been very happy with the interface and modelling capabilities designing parts for injection molding.

DesignSpark Mechanical exports direct to .stl, so it’s wonderfully friendly for 3D printing, and it’s nice to see mechanical engineering and part design slowly being democratized the same way PCB design has become in the past 5-10 years!