[kiloaper]

There are a few existing applications. Autodesk have released a hobbyist package (http://www.123dapp.com/) and there's online ones as well (https://tinkercad.com/). OpenSCAD is my choice because it allows you to parametrically design objects with a scripting language.

[jfoutz]

Yar. there's also blender, sketchup, wings3d, art of illusion - there's a ton.

I guess, it's easy for me to imagine a shape - i can draw that shape on a piece of paper, but i find it hard to express that same shape using modeling software.

Say, wrap some text around the surface of a sphere. I'm pretty sure i could, letter by letter, orient and kern text in OpenSCAD but it would take me a long time to do.

i imagine in the not to distant future there will be a motion tracker or kinect app to allow shaping stuff like clay - or maybe just use clay and scan it in.

In any case, all the software i've used feels clunky. iMovie for modeling will be a big deal.

[Arelius]

I cannot stress how clunky any sort of 3D modelling without haptic feedback gets. Sure, I could make a clay modelling kinect app pretty damn quick (I even think I've seen one using professional 3D mocap systems before) But they take about as much time to get used to as more standard modellers, And zooming the editing space to do detail work is almost impossible for the human mind to comprehend. ]

[callil]

A simpler way to do stuff like text wrapping is through scripting. I'm learning Rhinoscript right now, and soon RhinoPython will be released from beta allowing anyone with python skills to manipulate 3D form pretty easily. I agree though that there isn't anything truly simple for stuff like this.