absolutely free CAD type programs

[ruben]

hello

good afternoon
i wanted to know which programs are absolutely free

I have used the non-commercial version of fusion 360 but it only lets me make 10 sketches.

my only preference is that they are completely free.
free and easy to use

thanks

 

[ruben]

or with free for life without the restriction of the sketches



thanks

 

[ruben]

i like CAD software for desing

 

[djc]

Someone asked a similar question some six months ago.

https://www.homemodelenginemachinis...d-model-with-measurements-that-is-free.36285/

Perhaps you could review those answers and say in what way they do not meet your needs.

If you research Fusion, I think you are limited to the number of 'active' projects/documents so you just make some of them inactive to continue.

https://www.desktopmakes.com/post/fusion-360-s-10-document-limit-explained

 

[rleete]

SolidWorks was on sale for $25 for the "makers" version. Not sure if it still is, but that is a bargain.

Edit: Just checked, and it's still that price. Why go with some half-assed free stuff, when you can buy one of the best packages out there for a nominal fee?

 

[Charles Lamont]

Onshape has a free licence plan.

 

[TonyM]

I prefer NanoCAD and Tinkercad.

 

[timo_gross]

Someone asked a similar question some six months ago.

https://www.homemodelenginemachinis...d-model-with-measurements-that-is-free.36285/

Perhaps you could review those answers and say in what way they do not meet your needs.

If you research Fusion, I think you are limited to the number of 'active' projects/documents so you just make some of them inactive to continue.

https://www.desktopmakes.com/post/fusion-360-s-10-document-limit-explained

There is "no free lunch", there is no such thing as "free" Cad Software. All you can get is something that does not cost money. You will still have to invest (same word? wonder why!) time instead of money.
The company offered "free" hobby licenses and small buisiness licenses of the in "first post mentioned software" to gain recognition and to utilize "free highly qualified labour force" in order to debug and test their software.

 

[stanstocker]

hello

good afternoon
i wanted to know which programs are absolutely free

I have used the non-commercial version of fusion 360 but it only lets me make 10 sketches.

my only preference is that they are completely free.
free and easy to use

thanks

First off: Have you done a search for free cad packages? Open Source CAD packages? You will get lots of hits, everything from clickbait to completely open and unrestricted cad packages of varying quality and capability.

The BIG hole in the free / open source world is quality CAM, although perhaps the latest FreeCAD may have filled that in, haven't had a free day to go play with it and see how it stacks up. This is based on needing to run machine tools in a conventional CNC sort of manner. The world is full of slicers for 3D stuff, and the router world has quite a few good free options. For running lasers in the small shop Lightburn is about the best game in town.

You haven't specified your OS. Other than purely web based packages, odds are you will have your choice of operating system opening up or eliminating many options. I have a few windows machines in spite of being a linux bigot. Alibre, virtual synthesizers / VST's / amp and cabinet modelers, tax software, on1Photo Raw, Lightburn (linux support discontinued as of release 2.x) and RC flight simulators simply make windows a necessity for the applications I want to use. There just are not open source options that I like as well, or in my opinion that are as good in ease of use or quality. In some cases there just are no even make excuses and fight your way through open source alternatives at all. Hurts to say it, but I'd rather be pragmatic than be one of those insufferable one and only one true way jerks. A wonderful app that is a joy to use on an irksome OS beats a lousy app on a wonderful OS.

Here are few options to have a peek at:

Free and easy? Tinkercad. Web based, increasingly capable, not just a LEGO like bunch of blocks any longer. About the only one I'd call "easy", and it still can trip you up.

Free with no restrictions? Freecad for parametric 3D CAD, LibreCAD for 2D. There are some others, do a google search. I had a lot of hassles with Freecad years ago and gave up on it, bought Alibre. FreeCAD has released an actual 1.x release level package after many years, I've heard that it actually works, many of the big issues have been resolved, and at least some of the often used workbenches have similar if not fully consistent behavior.

Free but with varying restrictions: Onshape, Fusion360 Hobby, NanoCAD. Many others, often in various forms of the old "Hey Kid! First one's free!" school of marketing. As you have seen over the years, Autodesk is particularly skilled at this game. They've been playing it since BEFORE there was such a thing as IBM PC Compatible. Used to run it on a Heath/Zentih (IIRC) H100 desktop almost half a century ago. Yup, even then they would change the terms on you.

Cheap, not free : Solidworks light and fluffy "makers" edition. $25 on sale. Maybe harsh, when solidworks dropped their EAA deal and brought out the "makers" edition the marketing was so gee whiz fluffy cutesy "Look at me! I'm a MAKER! Squeal with glee" multicultural diverse cliche cliche after cliche I darn near puked a few times before I could figure out just what the heck it really was. Biff and Babs flirting by the glowforge sort of feel. Seems they actually have something sort of useful, but nobody I know is using it and you just don't hear anyone singing it's praises on any of the forums. All my partners in crime are either full on Solidworks or Alibre folks for the most part, the retired guys who used to get full Solidworks via the EAA membership tended to go to Alibre for purely financial reasons. If you happen to a veteran, both brands have good to excellent pricing for you.

Two paid but not insanely expensive possibilities:

Real CAD at a decent you own it and it never expires price: Alibre Atom

A decent 2D DRAWING program with good CAM - Vectric Cut2D. Lowest cost version of the Vectric software. I've used VCarve Pro for years, but it's far from free. I all capped drawing as it is not in any way a technical cad package, it's for folks using routers for wood work. Different mindset to teh software, different market. But still very good software.

For a different sort of object creation, there are good free organic sculpting packages: Blender or Sculpt3D. Neither one is a technical cad, but worth knowing about. Nomad on a larger android tablet with a good stylus is excellent. Wings3D is well liked by many. Blender has some add ons that make it more useful for technical CAD but I haven't tried them out, blender is already insanely complex for a mere mortal like me.

"Easy" is actually the biggest stumbling item in your request, I find some things easy others find hard, and struggle to do what others find trivial. If you use a CAD package regularly you will eventually find it easy or at least consistent and know the magic keyboard shortcuts no matter which package you use.

 

[lucca]

Try FreeCAD. I have been using it since 2017 for engraving to complex vehicle design. See https://abbottanp.com/ Knowledge Center along the right hand side of the web page.

 

[petertha]

Cheap, not free : Solidworks light and fluffy "makers" edition. $25 on sale. Maybe harsh, when solidworks dropped their EAA deal and brought out the "makers" edition the marketing was so gee whiz fluffy cutesy "Look at me! I'm a MAKER!

The Marketing department has indeed had their fingers in the mess. (As a SW user) I keep monitoring Maker, but not brave enough to make the leap. As you mention everyone has different requirements. Or more often when venturing into 3D, don't know what they don't know quite yet. SW is pretty good software. At first brush, to replicate this power for $25 or $100 or whatever price is this month seems like a steal for model engineering purposes. Specific to Maker from what I've been reading, they did everything pretty much 'right' or at least according to their broad brushes of a non-commercial packaging..... up to the point of execution. Its a full version of SW, no different than buying SW Regular seat. In fact Maker packages other modules (freeform design, whatever they call it) which isn't even included with paid SW Regular which p*sses me off. Maker can save files in STL & STEP therefore can 3D print. Other export formats are turned off, I think the ones that talk to CNC, because, well, that is their way of ensuring non-commercial use. Whether we agree or disagree, that is how they implemented. IMO less confusing that Fusion, but that's another topic. If you need CAM, particularly integrated CAM, look elsewhere. Files made in Maker cannot be read in Regular, which again is their way of controlling commercialization. Aside from a watermark, the powerful Drawing module is identical to Regular.

But where they seem to have stumbled is associated to logging into 3D-Experience (The Swamp as I call it). It should be as simple as digital handshake validation with mothership you are who you say you are & proceed. But... seems like it works, it doesn't work, it forgets, it coughs on updates, little or no related support... And that aspect seems to be the pain point where many struggle & throw in the towel. But I also know people using Maker, deal with the occasional glitches it & happy as a clam.

Yes it seems EAA & all those other prior promotional SW discounts are being corralled into this maker-type of subscription based, online validation mode. I think Student & US military are still around (with detailed credential validation). And this might vary by country. And will $25 or $100 this year go to $250 next year? One only has to look at other apps to answer that question.

https://discover.solidworks.com/solidworks-makers?utm_medium=email&utm_source=promotional&utm_campaign=_XCMP9093_&utm_content=DM48291&RCid=@F8j7S+l6oE0l9et55Xljjw==

 

[BoCam]

Fusion 360 allows you to have 10 "editable" sketches. You can turn off "editable" for a specific sketch and it'll allow you to make another sketch. You can turn editable back on for any of your sketches up to 10 at a time.

 

[TSutrina]

hello

good afternoon
i wanted to know which programs are absolutely free

I have used the non-commercial version of fusion 360 but it only lets me make 10 sketches.

my only preference is that they are completely free.
free and easy to use

thanks

FreeCAD is free CAD design. FEA analysis etc. And you can import and export the standard file types. No size restrictions. I used Pro E and Unigraphics as an engineer. And have used Solid Works. This can compete with them. Using these programs for 15 years there is no program that does everything well. Free CAD isn't different. You learn to get around problems. Had to do that for the commercial products also. The new version 1.0 is still being debugged. It is usable but less friendly right now. That will change. You can drop back to the previous version.

 

[NapierDeltic]

FreeCAD is free and powerful! Cannot compare with others, though, -lack of experience with them.

 

[TSutrina]

First off: Have you done a search for free cad packages? Open Source CAD packages? You will get lots of hits, everything from clickbait to completely open and unrestricted cad packages of varying quality and capability.

The BIG hole in the free / open source world is quality CAM, although perhaps the latest FreeCAD may have filled that in, haven't had a free day to go play with it and see how it stacks up. This is based on needing to run machine tools in a conventional CNC sort of manner. The world is full of slicers for 3D stuff, and the router world has quite a few good free options. For running lasers in the small shop Lightburn is about the best game in town.

You haven't specified your OS. Other than purely web based packages, odds are you will have your choice of operating system opening up or eliminating many options. I have a few windows machines in spite of being a linux bigot. Alibre, virtual synthesizers / VST's / amp and cabinet modelers, tax software, on1Photo Raw, Lightburn (linux support discontinued as of release 2.x) and RC flight simulators simply make windows a necessity for the applications I want to use. There just are not open source options that I like as well, or in my opinion that are as good in ease of use or quality. In some cases there just are no even make excuses and fight your way through open source alternatives at all. Hurts to say it, but I'd rather be pragmatic than be one of those insufferable one and only one true way jerks. A wonderful app that is a joy to use on an irksome OS beats a lousy app on a wonderful OS.

Here are few options to have a peek at:

Free and easy? Tinkercad. Web based, increasingly capable, not just a LEGO like bunch of blocks any longer. About the only one I'd call "easy", and it still can trip you up.

Free with no restrictions? Freecad for parametric 3D CAD, LibreCAD for 2D. There are some others, do a google search. I had a lot of hassles with Freecad years ago and gave up on it, bought Alibre. FreeCAD has released an actual 1.x release level package after many years, I've heard that it actually works, many of the big issues have been resolved, and at least some of the often used workbenches have similar if not fully consistent behavior.

Free but with varying restrictions: Onshape, Fusion360 Hobby, NanoCAD. Many others, often in various forms of the old "Hey Kid! First one's free!" school of marketing. As you have seen over the years, Autodesk is particularly skilled at this game. They've been playing it since BEFORE there was such a thing as IBM PC Compatible. Used to run it on a Heath/Zentih (IIRC) H100 desktop almost half a century ago. Yup, even then they would change the terms on you.

Cheap, not free : Solidworks light and fluffy "makers" edition. $25 on sale. Maybe harsh, when solidworks dropped their EAA deal and brought out the "makers" edition the marketing was so gee whiz fluffy cutesy "Look at me! I'm a MAKER! Squeal with glee" multicultural diverse cliche cliche after cliche I darn near puked a few times before I could figure out just what the heck it really was. Biff and Babs flirting by the glowforge sort of feel. Seems they actually have something sort of useful, but nobody I know is using it and you just don't hear anyone singing it's praises on any of the forums. All my partners in crime are either full on Solidworks or Alibre folks for the most part, the retired guys who used to get full Solidworks via the EAA membership tended to go to Alibre for purely financial reasons. If you happen to a veteran, both brands have good to excellent pricing for you.

Two paid but not insanely expensive possibilities:

Real CAD at a decent you own it and it never expires price: Alibre Atom

A decent 2D DRAWING program with good CAM - Vectric Cut2D. Lowest cost version of the Vectric software. I've used VCarve Pro for years, but it's far from free. I all capped drawing as it is not in any way a technical cad package, it's for folks using routers for wood work. Different mindset to teh software, different market. But still very good software.

For a different sort of object creation, there are good free organic sculpting packages: Blender or Sculpt3D. Neither one is a technical cad, but worth knowing about. Nomad on a larger android tablet with a good stylus is excellent. Wings3D is well liked by many. Blender has some add ons that make it more useful for technical CAD but I haven't tried them out, blender is already insanely complex for a mere mortal like me.

"Easy" is actually the biggest stumbling item in your request, I find some things easy others find hard, and struggle to do what others find trivial. If you use a CAD package regularly you will eventually find it easy or at least consistent and know the magic keyboard shortcuts no matter which package you use.

I used the first free cad package the Pro E put out Granite. Other companies offered the their packages Creo was the second package from Pro E that use the alternate approach of not building up a building list. All of these companies used free ware to answer the question, what customers wanted and develop new technology. And all of them ended the offer for free. Purchase a hobbies 3D cad but it went bankrupt.
FreeCAD is unique in that it has a huge user base that exceeds Pro E, Unigraphics, and others. Only SolidWorks has more user because they are the lowest cost good commercial package. It has a world wide market and training is on youtube in many languages. Yes it is slow in implementing improvements and debugging. I think this acceptible since I make Zero money using it.

 

[Gordon]

My requirements when I started looking for a 3D CAD program was I wanted a program that actually lived on my computer instead of in the cloud and was not a subscription based program. I finally purchased Alibre Atom 3D. It is quite limited but I own it and it lives on my computer and the drawings also live on my computer so even if the company goes out of business I can still access my work. For some of the things that it will not do I am able to do in Free CAD and save in a format that I can open in Alibre. I have been stung in the past with programs that were WEB based and suddenly I lost my work because they either went out of business or changed the rules and a free program became a subscription program.

 

[petertha]

My requirements when I started looking for a 3D CAD program was I wanted a program that actually lived on my computer instead of in the cloud and was not a subscription based program.

I think many people share these aspirations. Holding files hostage on the cloud is where I draw the line. I'm no expert but I would venture to say most apps with any degree of power have the app installed locally vs cloud for performance anyway, but I know there are exceptions. Entirely cloud based requires good internet service. And the cloud is such a nebulous term these days, one has to be specific. It can mean anything form a nanosecond handshake to confirm you hold the license (app & files on your pc). Or OPTIONAL file sharing/collaboration intended. Or ONLY cloud storage.

But the reality is that non-subscription is becoming rarer & rarer in the mainstream world. Not just CAD apps, they have arguably been slow followers. But other regular apps have been going subscription model for a long time now. MS Office went to 365 subscription in 2017. Adobe went to Creative Cloud in 2013. I just got notified that my lowly $80 Adobe Photoshop Elements will be the last of the 'paid' apps, moving to '3 year term' = gateway flavor of subscription. I can name many more apps but I think you get the picture. Whether its to control pirating, release updates, security, or higher/steadier income streams, one can debate endlessly. But unless Joe is capable of writing his own software, Joe is not in a position to decide other than 'vote by credit card'. But in many arenas, there are fewer remaining options, good or bad.

Hanging onto to a legacy app to the grave is another strategy I considered. I know people with a couple spare PC's & their corresponding vintage OS in the garage, they will never see the internet. Perfectly viable if you are capable of maintaining them. But running older apps on newer OS, or the other way around doesn't always work without IT headaches. Replace a printer or hardware device these days & chances are good it won't support Win-7 anymore, Win-10 is probably next soon. So yet another consideration. No easy answers, everything has a personal cost. Some people relish this IT stuff & have this app running under Linux which is simulating Win to do that... I'm not one of them.

Getting off topic but I read a financial article where companies offer to own core infrastructure in your home & basically charge a monthly payment in exchange for maintenance & replacement. I'm not talking about a hefty solar installation, this pertained to a conventional furnace & hot water tank. Hey, leased cars have been around for a long time, why not a chunk of your house? Sounds great until the company goes kaput or changes terms. Or you sell your house & its a form of lien. The world is getting complicated, but I digress....

 

[Richard Hed]

I think many people share these aspirations. Holding files hostage on the cloud is where I draw the line. I'm no expert but I would venture to say most apps with any degree of power have the app installed locally vs cloud for performance anyway, but I know there are exceptions. Entirely cloud based requires good internet service. And the cloud is such a nebulous term these days, one has to be specific. It can mean anything form a nanosecond handshake to confirm you hold the license (app & files on your pc). Or OPTIONAL file sharing/collaboration intended. Or ONLY cloud storage.

But the reality is that non-subscription is becoming rarer & rarer in the mainstream world. Not just CAD apps, they have arguably been slow followers. But other regular apps have been going subscription model for a long time now. MS Office went to 365 subscription in 2017. Adobe went to Creative Cloud in 2013. I just got notified that my lowly $80 Adobe Photoshop Elements will be the last of the 'paid' apps, moving to '3 year term' = gateway flavor of subscription. I can name many more apps but I think you get the picture. Whether its to control pirating, release updates, security, or higher/steadier income streams, one can debate endlessly. But unless Joe is capable of writing his own software, Joe is not in a position to decide other than 'vote by credit card'. But in many arenas, there are fewer remaining options, good or bad.

Hanging onto to a legacy app to the grave is another strategy I considered. I know people with a couple spare PC's & their corresponding vintage OS in the garage, they will never see the internet. Perfectly viable if you are capable of maintaining them. But running older apps on newer OS, or the other way around doesn't always work without IT headaches. Replace a printer or hardware device these days & chances are good it won't support Win-7 anymore, Win-10 is probably next soon. So yet another consideration. No easy answers, everything has a personal cost. Some people relish this IT stuff & have this app running under Linux which is simulating Win to do that... I'm not one of them.

Getting off topic but I read a financial article where companies offer to own core infrastructure in your home & basically charge a monthly payment in exchange for maintenance & replacement. I'm not talking about a hefty solar installation, this pertained to a conventional furnace & hot water tank. Hey, leased cars have been around for a long time, why not a chunk of your house? Sounds great until the company goes kaput or changes terms. Or you sell your house & its a form of lien. The world is getting complicated, but I digress....

Yeah, and because msux wants a buttload of $$ for their bloated office, I went to Libre Open Office--free and does every thign anyone would want. Better than an msux product.

 

[stanstocker]

I think many people share these aspirations. Holding files hostage on the cloud is where I draw the line. I'm no expert but I would venture to say most apps with any degree of power have the app installed locally vs cloud for performance anyway, but I know there are exceptions. Entirely cloud based requires good internet service. And the cloud is such a nebulous term these days, one has to be specific. It can mean anything form a nanosecond handshake to confirm you hold the license (app & files on your pc). Or OPTIONAL file sharing/collaboration intended. Or ONLY cloud storage.

But the reality is that non-subscription is becoming rarer & rarer in the mainstream world. Not just CAD apps, they have arguably been slow followers. But other regular apps have been going subscription model for a long time now. MS Office went to 365 subscription in 2017. Adobe went to Creative Cloud in 2013. I just got notified that my lowly $80 Adobe Photoshop Elements will be the last of the 'paid' apps, moving to '3 year term' = gateway flavor of subscription. I can name many more apps but I think you get the picture. Whether its to control pirating, release updates, security, or higher/steadier income streams, one can debate endlessly. But unless Joe is capable of writing his own software, Joe is not in a position to decide other than 'vote by credit card'. But in many arenas, there are fewer remaining options, good or bad.

Hanging onto to a legacy app to the grave is another strategy I considered. I know people with a couple spare PC's & their corresponding vintage OS in the garage, they will never see the internet. Perfectly viable if you are capable of maintaining them. But running older apps on newer OS, or the other way around doesn't always work without IT headaches. Replace a printer or hardware device these days & chances are good it won't support Win-7 anymore, Win-10 is probably next soon. So yet another consideration. No easy answers, everything has a personal cost. Some people relish this IT stuff & have this app running under Linux which is simulating Win to do that... I'm not one of them.

Getting off topic but I read a financial article where companies offer to own core infrastructure in your home & basically charge a monthly payment in exchange for maintenance & replacement. I'm not talking about a hefty solar installation, this pertained to a conventional furnace & hot water tank. Hey, leased cars have been around for a long time, why not a chunk of your house? Sounds great until the company goes kaput or changes terms. Or you sell your house & its a form of lien. The world is getting complicated, but I digress....

This is going to drift well away from the free or low cost CAD area for a bit, please take no offense. I just went through some alternative software decision making and so far have found a few winners.

At least with regards to Microsoft Office and Adobe Extortionware Editions there are some good free or affordable commercial options. LibreOffice will handle most to all of what most people use office for, although there are issues for those who use extensive macro or scripting features. A nice alternative to Adobe Lightroom is the open source Darktable. If you were not impressed with Dartable a few years back (that's me!) the recent release is a huge improvement, clean interface, easy to use, most used stuff right up front. On the commercial side, On1 Photo Raw (Win and Mac) is often on sale for $49 and is really excellent. Even a linux bigot like me likes it a lot better than the GIMP for photo editing. Krita is also a good open source alternative, a bit of photo shop functions, a bit of illustrator.

To use a lot of the AI based features in On1 Photo Raw you will want to have a fair number of cuda cores available in your GPU, and the more memory you have the happier it is. But it is amazing. The AI clean up functions are impressive, I literally made a trash can disappear from a scanned negative image with a few clicks and even with high magnification can't tell it was ever there. When Adobe made their recent changes to licensing and subscriptions many folks put up videos on youtube documenting how they were able to say good by to adobe for good. Given subscription costs for adobe these days, 32 or better yet 64 GB of RAM and a 3060Ti or higher graphics card will be paid for in a year if you have to upgrade and you'll love the very much faster machine! No need to keep a 486DX with EGA video running any more

If you're looking for place to start getting off the subscription bandwagon, here's a good start for the adobe part of the show:

https://lifehacker.com/13-reasonable-alternatives-to-adobes-expensive-apps-1846699369

I've used or at least tested out everything they mention other than photopee and Sumopaint. I liked the affinity (Mac / Win / iPad) products very much, but just felt like On1 was more suitable for my needs. Affinity has a pretty complete set of apps for showing adobe the door and they are buy once and own forever, as is ON1. In reality, odds are I'll purchase Affinity Photo to fill in some other areas. You can do a lot with RawTherapee and Darktable though, all depends how complex your photo editing needs are. I am pretty sure every one of the open source alternatives are available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

That's probably far enough off topic so I'll wrap it up here. If a moderator feels this belongs in a different place I won't take any offence or be a jerk about it getting moved.