Joseph Gwinn wrote in news:joegwinn-
:

snip
I stared out using Draftsight, but found the learning curve far too
difficult. There isn't enough Draftsight documentation for a new user
to figure it out, so I started reading the AutoCAD documentation, as
Draftsight speaks perfect AutoCAD. It's *very* complex, with curliques
accumulated over the years.

So I talked to the MEs (mechanical engineers) at work. They said that
AutoCAD dominates the Architecture field, where it started, but had a
very long learning curve, and is 2D (with later 3D additions). Pro-E
was used for large-scale projects (with millions of pieces), is 3D, but
was impossible to use unless you used it for a living.

What the MEs used and recommended for home use was Alibre, which is 3D
from the start, and is a fairly clean new design. So I bought a
personal-use copy for $200 or so, and made more progress in two weeks
than I had made with DraftSight in many months. So, I abandoned
Draftsight, and stopped reading the thick AutoCAD books.

I have Alibre, and use it occasionally for 3D stuff, but it's a bit
buggy. If you don't apply constraints just right when aligning parts, it
will disassemble things at weird angles. "Undo" works, so it's not
fatal, but annoying.

For 2D, I use AutoSketch. When AutoDesk was getting their butts kicked
in the 2D market by a program called Drafix, they bought them out,
flushed their product & re-labled Drafix as AutoSketch. I've used it for
everything for about 23 years, from laying out 44 GHz power amps to
mapping the electrical wiring in my attic. The drawings are in Windows
metafile format under the hood, so they import into Word & PowerPoint
fairly seamlessly. The downside is that they layed off the development
team years ago, and it hasn't entirely kept up with changes Microsoft has
made in the metafile world. It's still my tool of choice for almost
everything, in large part because I can do stuff in it very quickly. 23
years ago, I had never used a CAD tool before, and I don't recall having
much trouble getting started. On the otherhand, I am still finding
shortcuts for some operations.

Version 9 is plenty good enough for most things, and being one release
out of date, is available for short money ( $25 if you shop around).

Doug White