DraftSight free 2D CAD product
N S K Chaitanya wrote in about an open source CAD program:
I just came across a software called DraftSight. It is an open source alternative to autocad. It is by Dassault Systemes and even runs on Linux. Finally Linux has DWG support…
According to Dassault Systemes, DraftSight is a “no-cost, easy-to-use 2D CAD product that is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Users can create, edit and view DWG files with DraftSight. DraftSight is available for all users, including CAD professionals, students and educators.”
The final version for Windows, and betas for Mac and Linux can be downloaded here. The 186 page User Manual PDF can be found here.
This entry was posted in Linux, software and tagged CAD, DraftSight.
Comments
Works great, the only issue with it is the dimensioning part, it looks like instead of making regular dimension elements it creates separate objects. QCad is faster to work with but DraftSight has better print options and is more point and click oriented … The way I work for e.g. is to draw everything using Qcad and then finalize and print from DraftSight.
It’s worth noting that it’s not open source by any means – you need to register and activate it on all platforms, and I don’t see tarballs lurking on the website.
@arhi
I used to have a dual-boot setup just for cad support on windows.
Being used to autocad and solidworks i found it hard to “adjust” to the cad softwares available on linux
Well atleast the free ones.
I do not have any idea about paid s/w like qcad.
Autocad withdrew native unix support in its early releases itself.
Draftsight works just fine for my purposes.
including the CLI and the likes.
It might not be the best one out there but it definitely has its own niche there.
It took me barely an hour to replicate an existing drawing of a CNC machine i made plans for, on draftsight
@ian
A loose usage of the term “open source” from my end.
Mia culpa.
But the point is productivity/ease-of-use/time-to-deploy no more is measured by $$$ on linux.
My major gripe with autocad was with compatibility on unix as i mentioned above.
I even have a licensed version of R14 of autocad on windows.
I am slowly shifting base to linux
(My AAO D250 running Ubuntu Studio boots faster than my Dual core 3 Ghz running XP)
:-D
CAD is one of the (few) reasons why i still have use for windows.
That need is slowly dimnishing
@Krishna there’s a “community edition” of qcad, which is decent but not as full-featured as the paid version is supposed to be. I personally use LibreCAD which is based on the qcad community edition.
Unfortunately, QCad’s community edition + LibreCAD do not support DWG to any extent as far as I know. <shameless-plug>However, if you’re entire use is for laser cutting/CNC routing, I’m working on a project, dwg2ponoko, for ponoko.com‘s laser cutting/CNC routing.</shameless-plug>
I failed, that’s dxf2ponoko. https://github.com/duckinator/dxf2ponoko
I also use qcad community (free) edition, that’s the one I talked about…
btw wrt cad on linux, on the 2d side there’s really not much (qcad, librecad, draftsight and few more … please don’t call inkscape cad :D )
On the 3d side there’s a bit more light varicad is pretty good (not open nor free), freecad and heekscad are free and open but imo unusable … what is interesting that most work ok under virtualbox. I run xp in virtualbox and i’m able to run solidworks without a problem. CoCreate (cree what is the new name now) also works ok, autocad works ok. Acad Inventor don’t, that new free stuff acad published also don’t work, alibre don’t work …
@arhi yea, I wasn’t calling inkscape CAD. It’s just a format ponoko supports easily, and there was a stray dxf->svg hanging around, so I decided LibreCAD -> SVG -> ponoko was better than trying it in inkscape itself… :)
From what I’ve seen on Linux, there’s less 2D CAD than 3D CAD overall, but there’s more 2D CAD software that’s directly usable on Linux (compared to 3D CAD directly usable on linux; and by directly I mean without wine/vbox/etc; and feel free to correct me on this — I’ve not looked very extensively :P).
Anyone here happen to know any open-source 3D CAD that runs natively on Linux? If not, how about an open-source one that at least works fine in wine?
Nick, ah I was not thinking of you when I said inkscape is not cad, just ppl often like to call it that hence I was trying to prevent something :D :D :D
2d, well, I can’t be overly confident but qcad satisfies 99% of what I need for 2d, and the 1% left can be done with DraftSight hence I think we are covered with native apps on Linux for 2d.
For 3d it really depends. For modeling there are Blender and AoI that are serious tools, very usable etc etc, but I can’t call them cad tools. I did some modeling for reprap in AoI and it can be done, especially as scripting is super easy, but it really lack the features regular cad tools have. There’s that great SCAD library for linux (open source) that is used by number of apps. I use openSCAD for lot of my reprap work (you write a scad code that represents the object and it renders you the object and export as number of different 3d formats) but it is really a txt processor that renders the 3d file nothing more … HeeksCAD is the most useful one but still far from being comparable to commercial tools (even free ones like CoCreate). There’s also freeCAD that’s “weird” .. it supposed to work and I seen some nice stuff made with it only, I never managed to make with it more then a cube .. something weird with it ..
Natively there’s varicad, works like a charm, real cad app, not too expensive (~800$ iirc), trial available, I suggest you give it a try .. There is also Netfabb Studio – free version (basic) runs naively on linux and is *the best* tool for repairing STL files out there. I use it non stop (I also purchased full version of Netfabb Studio Professional – windows only so far – ~1000$ that kicks ass for manipulating stl’s)
The best “free” option so far for 3d (that I used to use a lot) is PTC’s CoCreate PE (now it is called Creo as they merged with someone or someone purchased them). It is free version (limited to only 60 objects in assembly and can export only PTC’s proprietary file and STL, and can only open/import PTC’s file and IGES/STEP and some 2d formats – so you can’t import STL for example. The best thing about PTC’s CoCreate / Creo is that it works under VirtualBox. You only need to reduce the hw acceleration in the XP and it will work like a charm. Very fast and professional tool (PTC makes CAD apps for decades)… the PE version is not parametric but wth it works great :)
@arhi you should give librecad a try — it’s based on qcad, basically just qcad without the fugly :P
I’ve heard good things of openSCAD, and HeeksCAD looks nice but I haven’t managed to get it to compile yet (haven’t really tried, though).
I’ll take a look at Creo in a bit :)
Nick, will try libre but qcad ain’t ugly to me, it’s actually for me super easy to use :D maybe because my first cad was autocad 2.01 and that’s the version I used the longest …
For Creo PE you have to register and then you have to be online to use it (when it starts it checks your licence every time so you have to be online when you start it), but it is really cool. If running it in virtual box go to advanced options for your grahics card (xp) and disable hw acceleration. Works fast and without issues. I was unable to make it run with wine but haven’t tried for a while..
Heeks is great (requires a lot of external libraries to install but .. if you use 64bit fedora 14 I can send you the binaries :D ) but you really have to go trough some tutorial videos online to get the idea how it works (it’s not nearly intuitive as general cad tools) … openscad is irreplaceable for small machine design .. I use it every day, in time you start to develop your own libraries for openscad, there’s one library getting some popularity now (can’t remember the name) but anyhow you can find some very cool scripts on the thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/tag:openscad
i suggest also a9cad http://www.a9tech.com/ , and if you use eagle there is this program that convert dxf to scr http://www.micromagicsystems.com/#/dxf-converter/4523812840