I believe Fusion360 is free if you are making less than $100k/yr on it. And the skills are transferable to Solidworks if you continue with CAD.

It may be free, but it's still proprietary

SolidWorks is $5000/seat, right? At least, for the non-Student version?

And the Student version is only available to people with a valid current student ID, and saves files in a format that is intentionally incompatible with the normal version?

Student files are not incompatible, but as soon as a student licensed copy touches a part or assembly, it becomes "tainted" (such that it says "student edition" in the corner or something). I worked at a university-based company where we had a bunch of student licenses and a couple pro licenses, and we had to be very careful about separating the files and making sure that the student edition never touched our professional files.

not a solution, but their entrepreneurial pack will set you up with a year long seat on just about whatever software they offer for free.

You think? I could never figure out how to do anything in SolidWorks, whereas I could just pick up Fusion and create. Fusion's interface seemed much more intuitive to me, and I had zero experience with CAD before. Plus, it's free.

Nowadays I use OnShape because it's decent and the only thing that works on Linux. I do miss some of the more advanced features, though (e.g. simulation, or variables).

Organic modeling in Solidworks seems to be extremely difficult. That being said, the Power Surfacing plugin has a good reputation:

https://www.npowersoftware.com/NewPowerSurfacingOverview.htm...

Skilled operators can likely work near-magic anyway, given sufficient time. ;)

I'd disagree with 2 and 3, at least at the hobbyist level. Fusion can import STEP files, which at least in my experience are far more common that SolidWorks files. And there's a huge number of Fusion tutorials and videos online, not to mention that Autodesk has a large selection of howto videos on their website.