isn't pro e mainly for industrial design. I'd go for either formz or rhino since they are used a lot in architecture. the new version of formz even allows you to export to to colour 3d printers

i'm going for a m.a. in industrial design..... i already have a b.a. in arch.

i would use it mainly on the programming side... i'm not too worried about pretty pictures since you can always use photoshop to do that...

b

You probably want to find out what hardware your school uses, or to what hardware you will be sending your output. At Penn, the mill ONLY allows files generated in Rhino. So it's more a question of what programs will work for the final output hardware. Max is solids, Rhino is NURBS surfaces. Very different stuff as far as the computer goes.

you could also look into:

http://www.ugs.com/

(i find their website doesn't actually give you a lot of info about their apps, apple uses them as well as dyson)

for Industrial Deign I would have to really recommend Solidworks,and Flash.......I never used pro-E but solidworks is a great parametric 3D modeler, and Flash is a great tool not only for web design but for presentation and Illustrating your designs, but if you prefer you can also use Photoshop for your Illustrations of your 3d Model...I also really like RHino (been useing for a few years now myself) its a great surface modeler that you can use, then Render it with Vray or even Flamingo(not first choice, but ok)

Solidworks can be used to model then you can actually use a 3d printer .....
http://www.3dsystems.com/products/multijet/index.asp

how abt 3ds max? i learn it but would love to try new software...
formz looks cool