DraftSight is a free* 2D CAD product that lets you create, edit and view DWG files. DraftSight:
For the makers of Draftsight, are the minimum system requirements listed on the page really the absolute minimum, or can you get away with less?
I am interested in reading about others’ experience with this. One of the folks at MS Research said he’d tried it and it was laggy, but I’m not sure what sort of PC it was running on. We’re looking for something that is low-cost and easy to use so we can replace Visio on the machines connected to our laser cutters.
That’s pretty much my exact use I was thinking for it as well: getting students to design 2D parts we can cut out on a laser.
i dunno what is wrong if anything, but it is too laggy to use, my computer is a dual processor xeon @ 3.2 gigahertz and 4 gigs of ram. i think it might not work on 64 bit operating systems?
Could have something to do with it. It works just fine on Win7 on my P4 2.4GHz w/ 3 gigs of DDR RAM, while recording TV in WMC.
So far, it seems pretty decent, and while it’s no parametric solid modeler, I’m finding myself able to use it. I’m liking it better than other similar CAD programs I’ve tried. I like the help documents and tutorial videos for it as well.
This is working fine on my laptop with no noticeable issues.
i5 430m 2.26GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM
Intel Intergrated Graphics
Windows 7 x64
For me I see this as a good, lightweight CAD software to use compared to more heavy AutoCAD. Installation folder takes up around 156MB and the installer is like 57MB?
I’ll try it on my mac. It’d be nice to be able to do CAD on my mac without having to shut down and boot Windows XP.
Can students under 18 download and use this? It says you have to be 18 or representing a business entity.
Probably going to get anti-GP flack for this, but this is the internet, you can be anything you want to be, who’s checking?
True that. Besides the point, does anyone know of any possible better CAD applications (Mac friendly?)?
I don’t know if you knew or not, but they now have AutoCAD for Mac, which you can get for free as a student just like all of the other Autodesk programs. While personally, I don’t like Mac’s, being an architecture student, I have plenty of friends who run AutoCAD for Mac, and from what I’ve heard is it works good, but is sometimes glitchy and is missing some of the basic text commands, and some of those famous “mac features” make things difficult to navigate. Then again, it is still the first release, so I’m sure things will improve over the next few releases. AutoCAD for PC has had almost 30 years of development, Mac will get there, just needs some time.
Also, I’m pretty sure SolidWorks runs on Mac, but don’t quote me on that as I’m not familiar with SolidWorks products.
Thanks!