Joseph Gwinn Inscribed thus:

In article , Baron
wrote:

Winston Inscribed thus:

Larry Jaques wrote:

(...)

I once thought I'd won a copy after filling out an entry form for
a raffle with a fresh copy as the prize. They called a week later
and my
heart stopped...until I found out that I hadn't won squat. They
just wanted to see if I had $1,500 (a $700 savings!) to try it out
anyway. I gritted my teeth, deleted my expletives, and said "Uh,
no."

Ouch.

2D CAD is worlds better than a drawing board IMHO.
If you can buy a copy of Generic CADD from days of
yore, you can use it's license number to get a
huge discount on Visual CADD 6 ($150 instead of
$450):
http://www.visualcadd.com/

--Winston

Draftsight runs on Linux and Winblows, and its free for personal use
!

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.

Joe Gwinn

Oddly enough I found Autocad very un-intuitive though not overly
difficult. I find Draftsight much easier to get on with, though I must
confess I originally started with Turbocad way way back in the DOS days
and did a lot of PCB work using that until I discovered Eagle.

Draftcad is an excellent 2D/3D platform and as you say, reads and writes
DFX/DWG perfectly. Certainly well enough to feed straight into a laser
cutter and auto punch press. It does have some bugs though and its
behavior is different between Winblows and Linux. The DO/UnDo is very
handy at times particularly when a bug causes an unexpected effect.

--
Best Regards:
Baron.