On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 11:41:50 -0500, "Brian"
wrote:

I want to draw up some designs for simple objects. In years past I would
have used paper and a drawing table, but it seems that a program is the
current way to go. What CAD program is suitable for a computer challenged
person, using a lap top, who wants to be able to:

create, save and print out on a normal ink-jet HP type printer drawings of
things like car flywheels.

There are three general classes of drawing programs, "paint", "draw",
and "CAD". Paint is conceptually simple, like sketching with a pencil,
but it requires similar freehand drawing skills. Draw lets you place,
resize, and adjust graphic primitives (lines, rectangles, circles) by
eye or using "rulers".

CAD is draw by-the-numbers, where positions and lengths of the graphic
primitives are entered numerically to whatever precision you select.
It is thus much less intuitive than paint or draw, and the user
interface of a CAD program tends to be much more idiosyncratic.

If you would previously have been happy with a freehand paper sketch,
paint is the simplest thing to learn. If you'd accept a paper sketch
if it had straight edges and round circles, but was not drawn quite
perfectly to scale, and had dimensions drawn in by hand, try a draw
program.

But if you want the program to help you think about exact dimensions
and how they interact, and force you to resolve all your objects'
uncertainties precisely, then you may find the learning curve of a CAD
program worth tackling.

email files and have other people be able to read them

Paint files can generally be transferred, even across operating
systems. Some draw files can be transferred, others must be converted
to un-editable paint files first.

Exchanging CAD files is the bane of the industry. Yes there are
standards, but there are too many of them and none of them work 100%.
You may find that your carefully drawn assembly transfers as thousands
of extremely short unrelated line segments, or the transferred drawing
is at a completely different scale than you intended, or...

You can always export CAD files as draw or paint images, but the
receiver won't be able to edit them with CAD tools.

post drawings of objects on a web page

Generally you would convert them to paint - bitmap graphics. Most CAD
programs have proprietary web view systems that allow the viewer some
subset of CAD functions, but each viewer would need to install the
proprietary software. Which is typically 5 to 30 MB...

be compatable with any industry standards that may exist.

The de-facto standard for 2D CAD is the AutoCad file format. The
problem is "which version"? AutoDesk has recently made radical changes
to their file format, so most of the AutoCad clone programs can only
interact with older file versions. And even for supported versions,
the conversion may be less than perfect.

Frankly, the effort of learning a CAD program will completely
overwhelm whatever price you pay for it. And most of what you've
leaarned won't transfer to any other vendor's programs any better than
the drawing files you create with it do. But if you need the rigorous
discipline of designing things with CAD, it is definitely worth it.

If you want to get started with CAD, read this review of current
entry-level programs:
http://cadalyst.adv100.com/cadalyst/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=80760

I started out with the "personal use" license for VDraft, which is
about the lowest entry price around. I chose it because it uses the
actual filehandling code from the older versions of AutoCad, which
means it can read and write old-style AutoCad files with no errors and
no translation delays. And its quirks are no worse than any of the
others...

Loren