#Draftsight for mac review full#
#Draftsight for mac review software#

rhino + visual arq may also be an option in that price range if you pay full commercial retail or for less than $400 combined if you can get the academic versions. cadopia intellicad, which is an autocad lt clone offered from several companies (including proge cad by progesoft mentioned above) worked very well, but i have not upgraded the license as the free tools now offered are more than enough for my basic drafting needsДЇor the next step up, vectorworks interests me and a colleague tells me it is very good. solid edge 2d seems very stable, but its interface and short-cut commands are the least like autocad and i just didn't want to take the time to learn a new interface.Д«ack about four years ago, before such high quality free 2d autocad clones were offered, i tried the demo of turbocad and ultimately purchased a copy of cadopia intellicad for a few hundred dollars (b/c I could not afford real autocad lt). doublecad might offer some more of the advanced features that current autocad lt has and it also has a $500 version that is supposed to have as many or more features than autocad lt, whereas draftsight and solid edge 2d are a bit more basic and do not offer upgraded versions at a cost. having said that doublecad and solid edge 2d seemed very competent for 2d drafting.

i ended up sticking with draftsight b/c for me, it felt the most like old autocad, especially the short-cut commands, with which i am very fast and efficient. When i first tried out draftsight, i also tried doublecad by the maker of turbocad b/c it is also a free autocad clone, as well as siemens' free solid edge 2d app, which is also an autocad clone. Here is the link for the place on the rhino website where it tells you that academic versions are unrestricted commercial versions: ДЄnd with respect to other free cad programs you may want to try, here is some additional information So if you got the academic version of rhino plus a free drafting tool like draftsight, you'd only be out $140 and have pretty robust, powerful capabilities. great company, great people, great community.

it has enough drafting features that it is possible to draft and annotate in it, but i do not think the annotation or plotting is even as complete as the autocad clones, so i'm not as thrilled with it for 2d documentation, though they are improving this. i learned it about a year and a half ago and it quickly became my go-to modeling app, and i've done some drafting in it, as well. so you could probably move to rhino very cheaply, and its interface and commands are enough like autocad that it is surprisingly easy to pick up.

#Draftsight for mac review software#

Oh, i almost forgot, donna, that as an educator, you can buy rhino from novedge for about $140 and all academic versions of the software may be used commercially without restrictions.