CNC Benchracing

greets to all,

been googling for machine modeling/simulation software for a couple of
days now with mostly bad luck. trying to do it with a spreadsheet and
some old physics books, but its getting fugly fast.

what i would like to do is be able to draw up a machine in cad, and have
some software calculate the inertia's, torques, deflection, weight,
whatever i can get... basically i would like to be able to substitute
different materials/dimensions for the components and see the new
machine parameters.

everything i have found so far has been extremely tall dollar OEM
software.. preferred platform is Linux, but ill take what i can get.

there are just too many variables in this kind of stuff for a neophyte
like me to handle all at once.

any suggestions?


TIA

C Cowley