Cad Software.

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Lood

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I'd like some opinions on good CAD software for amateur use? I don't mind paying for a good product, but seeing that I won't use it that much, I don't want to go overboard with regards to the price.
 
What type of CAD program are you looking for, or maybe better asked , what are you wanting to accomplish with it? If your wanting to do 2D drawings and such, there is a plethora of options out there and several rather good ones that are free, both open and closed source. If your looking for doing 3D solid modeling, your choices for free or low cost just got a lot smaller. Or, are you looking to do 3D "organic" modeling, in which case you would be wanting a mesh modeler, which is not really CAD, though they do share a number of features.

So maybe tell us a bit about what your wanting to do and how much time you have to put into learning. Knowing that, myself and others will be able to point you to some rather good options that should meet your end goals.

Mark
 
The other question is which Operating system are you going to run it on? OSX, Linux, Windows?
 
Have a look at Q CAD you can down load for free. so you can get the feel of it the full instruction book is cheap and teaches you from the very basics of drawing. You can the decide to get the pro version if you want, the cost is minimal.. I tried three others before Q CAD and all they did was confuse me

Mind you at the age of 74 that's not hard to do !!!

Brian
 
Thanks. I use Windows and long ago, I used to have Autocad Light installed on my desktop. I enjoyed working with Autocad LT. After that, I had Autocad Student, but I now find all the steps to go through before being able to download it, near impossible. Unfortunately, the pay versions of Autocad seem srather rediculous in price - just my opinion.
I only want to do simple 2D drawings of projects that I want make on the lathe and mill.
 
I bought turbo Cad from office max or somewhere similar. it is good for hobby use. it was also under $100. another option for 3d stuff that i like is Google's sketchup- you pretty much create profile and "extrude" it, and it is really capable for being free!
 
Yep, Draftsight will be perfect for your background. I just noticed they now do Mac and Linux too.
 
Since you are accustomed to AutoCAD LT, you might find another Autodesk product to your liking, called AutoSketch. It is primarily a 2D product but is capable of doing some simple 3D extrusions in the latest versions. It can produce and open DXF and DWG files and a few others in addition to its own SKF format. Version 10 runs about $300 to purchase, but copies of version 9 (which I use) can be found for under $100. It runs just fine on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1

I tried Draftsight some time back, prior to purchasing AutoSketch 9, and it would not even launch without DLL file conflicts on the computer I had at that time (Vista), so I never got to try it out. I've heard good reviews of it, but sadly never got the chance to see for myself.
 
I read some good things on another site about Cubify.

When I get my CNC mill running I'm going to purchase it. Price is right at $50. They also have a 14 day free trial.

http://cubify.com/en/Products/Invent
 
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