Mech Engineering build -- card for rendering?

[Mr. Baz]

I'm going back to college as a junior to finish a mechanical engineering degree. What would be best to go with when it comes to video cards and rendering? On one side you have solidworks and opengl, and autodesk with directx on the other. I'll probably end up using other software as well. Is there any software on the market that takes advantage of cuda or tessellation?