I started on Thingiverse, then copied everything over to Printables when it became available. The traffic difference between them is huge. I uploaded my models to Printables in March 2022, and my total downloads is just over 2K for all of them. On Thingiverse, I have 4K downloads in just the last 30 days.

I still post most things to both sites, but sometimes I get lazy or will "do it later" and just not.

If you are an American or Canadian veteran, you can get the educational version of Solidworks for $20 / year. I’m on my 8th or 9th year of using it.