Do you have to know CAD to get started in 3d printing? I would like to start but do not know CAD, and what set up should someone like myself get? Thank you for your help 
Fusion360. There are tons of tutorials to help you get started. Also, Blender 3D is used for 3D printing, as well, but usually for more free form objects.
You can just download objects straight from thingiverse and load it into your slicer.
Knowing a little bit about cad/modeling is great, but not totally necessary.
Sure… but downloading is the gateway.
Eventually you want to modify something. So you signup for a tinkercad account, load and object from thingiverse and figure out how to modify it.
After that you can start making things from scratch.
You don’t Have to know all about CAD before you can start.
I got my first 3D printer about 1 month ago and i did not know CAD. I can say i know now 123D desing.
I started off with inventor but it is really too expensive. I switched to freecad then, a very good free tool to learn parametric design. After reaching it’s limits I tried another few (blender, tinkercad) but the latter is too limited and blender is not intended for cad usage. I have settled now with fusion360 also. A very great tool, which does almost everything​ I could want.
Try Tinkercad for very basic intro to design. Then move on to Onshape for more engineering design. If you’re a programmer you may want to try OpenSCAD.
@Adam_Steinmark oscad is also a very good one. It has a steep learning curve but it is absolutely great is you want to design "with style*
I was in the same boat as you, I started out with just printing from downloaded files, and now I use Sketchup for anything I want to design. The more you play the more you learn, I’ve now started using trinkercad and meshmixer to modify bits.
You don’t need to know CAD to get started. You can download plenty of files and print. However, sooner or later you will want to modify something, or possibly create your own. That’s when knowing some kind of CAD program will come in handy. There are plenty of different kinds out there, some free, some paid, some architectural, and some more designed for blending shapes. What you choose is entirely up to you of course. There’s no real right or wrong answer, or this is better than that … it all depends on your desired end result. (I used to use SketchUp but have since switched to Inventor and AutoCAD for what I do.)
Thank you so much for all of your input. It was all very helpful. I hope to be printing some things for my kids, and myself soon. Trying to think of something for my drum set or drone…
Goto thingiverse… put “drums” in the search.
FreeCAD - opensource
Another vote for fusion 360, beautiful and free program produced by autodesk.