Free CAD software

[black85vette]

ke7hr mentioned in his post about some software he down loaded and that it was free. I went over to

http://doublecad.com/

and checked it out. I really have little need for 3D modeling and don't have the time to learn a complex software package. But I have used Auto CAD lite some in the past and this package is similar to it. Their basic program is free and they hope you will buy the Pro upgrade. You do have to register and give them a valid email.

Anyway, the price is right and I thought I would pass the info along.

 

[CrewCab]

Anyway, the price is right

Good point 'vet ............. Many thanks Thm:

CC

 

[deadin]

I tried downloading this but couldn't get it to install. About halfway through the installation it decided that I was missing some sort of file it wanted. Te file had some kind of gobbledygook name, and being as computer literate as I am, I just gave up.

Are there any others out there that someone might recommend? I'm not looking to spend a fortune if I decide I want one, just something free (or nearly so) that I can play with. I did some searching and have found a great number of "Lite" versions for free download. Among them are: CoCreate, T-FLEX Student, Kompass 3DLT, Alibre, etc, etc.
I'm running Windows Vista x64 with 4GB RAM. Any hints??

 

[ttrikalin]

karma to you sir - nice pointer for newbies like me.

 

[kf2qd]

Another Free CAD package is Progecad 2009 Smart. - www.progesoft.com - I have played with the 2008 and now the 2009 version and they function pretty much like AutoCAD LT. I also have the free version of Double Cad and it might be a little more like AutoCAD2009 than is Progecad. I haven't played enough with Double CAD to get all the settings where I like them. I like to use the older, less busy user interface and it is easier to do that with ProgeCAD. There are other free CAD packages out there but they are lacking too many of the features and that makes it difficult to get the results i want.

They will let you play a bit with 3D but they are really better for working in 2D.

 

[ke7hr]

I have been using DoubleCAD XT for a couple of months now and am getting the settings to be what I want them to be. There is a useful function area to get keyboard short cuts to work like you want. Example, type MID instead of MiddleOfLine or some such. More like the AutoCAD short cuts that I used.

For a 2D program, it works well and even if you only use it to view other CAD program formatted files (DWG, DXF, etc.) it is certainly priced right!

 

[GrahamC]

I download both Double CAD XT and Progecad 2009 Smart both thanks to the pointers in this thread.

Double CAD XT installed with no problems but ProgeCAD would not work, kept getting and error about something being wrong with one of the DLL's. I didn't bother debugging the problem and simply removed the app. I am using Windows 2000 and I may try it on a Win XP machine but for the moment Double CAD seems to do what I want. Never the less, I still like to play around with different apps.

I think I will replace my old (very old) copy of Turbo CAD LE which is essentially Turbo CAD v4 with Double CAD XT. Turbo CAD LE (learning edition) is still available as a download from a variety of sources but I couldn't find it on TurboCAD's web site.

Here is one location: http://www.turbocadables.com/download.php about half way down the page. Works best with older versions of Windows we are warned, not so happy on XP and may not work at all on newer versions than XP.

Now to find a decent 2d CAD for Linux and I will probably just start using Linux for everything.

cheers, Graham in Ottawa Canada

 

[arnoldb]

Hi - missed this a bit earlier :-[
Graham, for Linux, you can try the QCad Community edition.
I've worked with it a bit and it's a fairly nice 2D cad package for linux.

Regards, Arnold

 

[GrahamC]

QCAD - I heard of that but never looked into it, I will now.

cheers, Graham