On Sun, 6 Mar 2011 12:42:17 +0800, the renowned "Dennis"
wrote:

I'm sure this has been asked many a time....

I'm doing some work for a company that is currently doing their mechanical
dwgs using Microsoft Visio. It's slow, impractical and a *major* PITA to
use.

Ugh.

Most of the drawing are simply showing sheet metal layouts, hole locations
etc. A 2d package would be ok.


Has anyone found a open source or freeware package that is really usable.
I've used & really like SolidWorks but the company is small and
unwilling/unable to spent $100 let alone many thousands!

I've found a couple BRL-Cad and FreeCad - any experience anyone?

Thanks

Others mentioned the free 2D Dassault program, which I guess is
intended to replace 2D Autocad-like seats. It does do .dxf and .dwg,
but there's a potentially serious catch with the periodic online
activation requirements.

http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsig...tsight-2d-cad/


There's also Google Sketchup, which has a free version as well as a
$500 version, but not sure how good that is for making dimensioned
drawings (looks like you have to pay $500 to get usable features like
export of .dxf and dimensioning)

http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/p.../whygopro.html



Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com