The web is a big place, but nothing beats it for researching information quickly. But how do you find that needle in the haystack?
www.3DContentCentral.com The fastest way to design in a component is to have someone give you the model. From here, download full 3D models in any popular MCAD or neutral file format. Vendor certified websites and individual user downloads are both available.
www.asme.org American Society of Mechancial Engineers, most every technical society has a web site; but some are nearly worth the price of dues in themselves. Perhaps not the best layout, it offers great services like access to the society research librarian, whom will answer most any document related querry in surprisingly short order.
www.cadinfo.net A clean, well organized CAD resource site, complete with associated newsletter and other helpful tools.
www.cad-portal.com Another CAD resource site with a focus on industry news.
www.eng-tips.com A community forums site with top rate FAQ, technical posts and more. Several general and specific engineering categories and specialized software forums.
www.dejanews.com (a google site) is great for searching relevant newsgroup postings without wading through tons of sequential posts in a newsreader. Type in something like 3D modeling tips, and get a prioritized list of relevant posts.
www.cnet.com Are you a gadnet nut, or tech news junkie? This is the place for you.
www.deskeng.com Desktop Engineering is one of the broader technical trade publications out there. Rarely biased and always informative and well written.
www.google.com is certainly one of the better search sites around, and it can do little known things like look up phone numbers, addresses, and other tasks.
www.techstreet.com Need a downloadable copy of an ANSI Standard? Want to replace that System Dynamics textbook you lost, or want to learn something new? This is the place for all that and more.
www.tenlinks.com is more of portal than a search site, and is somewhat based on the premise that only the top ten results of any search are worth much. It has MCAD and technical directories of web resources arranged in nice logical groupings.
www.zdnet.com Although it is less apparent in the current web site layout, ZDNet is still one of the largest Shareware archieves out there, and seems to have the most technical orientation. MCAD utilities, Windows enhancements, and mini engineering calculators abound. Brought to you by Ziff Davis, the publisher of PC Magazine and more.