"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2011-03-06, 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.

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?

I've recently found qcad from RibbonSoft to be the easiest to
use with precision drawing. (I'm running it on OpenBSD, where it is one
of the included packages ready to install.)

I've had difficulties compiling the source on Sun's Solaris 10
for whatever reason.

You can download a demo version for several OS's (including
Windows) from he

http://www.qcad.org/qcad_downloads.html

but these will shut down after ten minutes of drawing, and can be used
for a total of 100 hours before they refuse to work at all. (No such
limitation in the one in OpenBSD, FWIW.)

This page:

http://www.qcad.org/store/?cPath=66

gives the prices (in Euros) for the various versions. I am somewhat
tempted. Buying it now gives a free upgrade from version 2.2 to the
upcoming versio 3.0. And I do find it the easiest to learn to use
properly of all that I have so far tried.

But -- I would be limited to using it on either the Mac Mini or
an Intel-based box running Solaris 10. (The program can be purchased
for Solair 10 x86, but not for the SPARC version, unfortunately.) But
then, the computer in the shop is running Solaris 10 x86, so that should
work. :-)

I'm currently downloading the part library to try with what I
have.

Aside from that -- there is another program (jDraft) which is
free -- runs on multiple systems in Java -- and I've just today
downloaded the most recent upgrade -- but not yet installed and tried
it.

You can download it from:

http://www.sparetimelabs.com/jdraft/index.html

and will have to request a license key to be able to save drawings. The
key is free -- he just uses it to track how many people get as far as
wanting to use the program after downloading it. You will need java on
your Windows box to run it. But aside from the systems named on the
page -- it also runs on Solaris 10 with no problems -- other than a
minor tweak needed to the file which stats it up. If anyone downloads
it (say one of the linux versions) and needs to run it on Solaris 10,
drop me an e-mail and I'll tell you how. (Fix the e-mail address as
described in my .sig block below.)

Enjoy,
Don.

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Thanks for the reply Don, the Draft Sight option Spehro suggested looks like
a good fit. I found the QCad - the completely free (for now) aspect might
ease the implementation of the Draft Sight option..