DraftSight no longer free

Just a quick update. I was a dedicated Draftsight user for a long time. Also had the Dassault questionaire a while back Also told them what I thought. Deafened by the silence.

However tried a number of the freebies out and a number of the cheaper paid for systems. I settled on QCAD nearly a year ago and have been very pleased with the whole thing. Yes it is perhap a little clumsier than some of the others but it has proved reliable with little to complain about.

regards

Ian

George, If it downloaded try to run it in compatibility mode. You can Google this for more details

regards

I've been a satisfied AutoCad 2016 user under an educational license (therefore free) but my eligibility for the free educational license has recently changed as I am no longer involved in teaching. I don't want to fork out the $$$ for the full license, and AutoCadLT, while cheaper, may not have the functionality I am accustomed to, so I need something that will allow me to still access the collection of dwg files I have created over the years.

I like the sound of LibreCad and wonder if anyone on this forum has used it and would like to offer some comment on their experiences?

Thanks.

It works quite well for basic stuff and has a recognisable interface similar to other products. The one down side is that documentation is quite limited and via Wiki. Hence it would be very difficult to pick up if you had no previous experience. I can't personally comment on its limitations as I've never used it to its limits as I tend to prefer cutting metal to drawing. Why not give it a go - it won't cost you anything and you do not have to sign up / register or any of that hassle, the rest of the ' Libre ' suite is excellent by the way if you haven't used any of them before!

Hope that helps - regards Mike

I like the sound of LibreCad and wonder if anyone on this forum has used it

I tried Librecad & Qcad when Draftsight stopped working, but neither would reliably open the drawings I had done previously with Draftsight.

I settled on Nanocad, which has been fine with the older drawings. It has it's quirks & won't draw lines tangent-to-tangent between two circles, but it was reasonably straight forward to configure the interface to look basically the same as I had Draftsight set, which in turn was basically the way I used to have Autocad LT set at my previous employment. The quirks have been reasonably straight forward to sort out with the built-in help function & I have managed to complete all the drawings I have needed to do on it. The keyboard commands seem to be the same as Draftsight & Autocad LT.

Nanocad has a perpetually free version, so there doesn't seem to be the risk of investing time learning something from one of the big players that is touted as "free to non-profit users" then have the rules changed later down the line. Fusion 360 is one that lost functionality from the initial offering & Dassault Systems have moved the goalposts again for EAA members, who used to have access free to the student edition of Solidworks but now have to pay (at a discounted rate admittedly) for access to a "cloud based" version - but for how long ?

Nigel B.

I tried LibreCAD briefly. My reason for doing so was that I'd just stopped using DraftSight and had found that QCAD was having issues correctly drawing a fill (or hatch maybe) in a drawing that had been originally created by someone else. DraftSight had handled it ok but QCAD messed up the order of the vertices so the fill was all wrong.

LibreCad also messed up the fills on the same drawing. It was as bad or worse (I can't remember exactly) so I carried on with QCAD and redrew the affected fills.

I believe that the drawing was created originally with AutoCAD so this may have some relevance for you.

A lot of the free CAD tools handle only DXF. The ODA file converter will allow you to translate your DWG files into DXF... even after you lose access to your original tool.

https://www.opendesign.com/guestfiles/oda_file_converter

It is possible that the conversion process messed up my fills and that neither QCAD nor LibreCAD were to blame. I did not dig into the detail because it was easier to just draw the problem ones again.

.

Please remember that there are many versions of these file-types

I think this QCAD page is relevant: **LINK**

https://qcad.org/en/documentation/features

MichaelG.

I don't know if this will be helpful to you ian but from the Solid Edge Help/Support site (Importing/Exporting Files)

" dxf and .dwg format files can be opened in the Draft environment as 2D geometry. The translation options available for these files vary based on the creation methods of the originating CAD system. You can generate .dxf and .dwg files in systems other than AutoCAD.

The Draft environment will open .dxf and .dwg files created in AutoCAD version 12 through AutoCAD 2011. Solids created with Autodesk are output to .sat format as they are encountered in the AutoCAD file. " 

AutoCAD to Solid Edge Translation Wizard     Also link to Translation Wizard help

I've not needed to do this myself yet but it seems welll documented.

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 28/11/2021 23:47:35