Free Professional CAD Suite comparable to AutoCad

[tony506]

Hi All,
I was reading the messages about the infamous $25.99 Coral Draw Suite.
I found this a while back Draft Sight. It is a professional cad suite and it's free.I am no Auto Cad whiz, I don't have it, but I tried the 30 day trial and compared it to Draft Sight which is basically the same thing.
No tricks, they just want your name and address. I have had no junk mail from them either.
Nothing lost for free. Here is the link.

http://www.3ds.com/products-services/dr ... raftsight/
Tony

[beefy]

Have a look also at SolidEdge 2D Drafting by Seimens.

Completely free and I believe it's the 2D component of their multi-thousand dollar 3d software SolidEdge. I'm guessing they are trying to entice potential future customers to get to like their application, but they don't do much to help you learn in, a bit counter productive I think.

Keith.

[CNCCAJUN]

Having working in AutoCAD as a designer for the past 20+ years,I can tell you DraftSight is an almost perfect clone of AutoCAD. A mix between AutoCAD lite & full blown AutoCAD minus the 3d & lisp capability.

That said, if you are looking for a short learning curve, AutoCAD or a clone of it, is not a good choice.

I now run DraftSight & very seldom do I find a difference from AutoCAD.

Steve

[beefy]

Completely agree about the learning curve bit.

I've lost count of the amount of time a newcomer to cad has tried Draftsight and SolidEdge 2D, and said they find Draftsight very un-intuitive.

That's quite frustrating because there's quite a lot of videos and tutorials for Draftsight and Autocad, but they can be hard to come by for SolidEdge.

Keith.