Best Low Cost or Free 2D CAD Programs

I'd be curious to hear other opinions on this topic.

I'll start it off by saying that I use AutoSketch from Autocad. Its an easy to learn and use package for basic 2D drafting, in the range of $99. to $129. from retailers.

I use it in 3 basic ways:

1 - to create dimensioned drawings for making parts on manual machines

2 - to create 2.5D designs which are output as .dxf files and read into SheetCAM or VisualMill for CNC machining.

3 - to create 2D views that output as .dxf files and read in to Rhino to be extruded and mapped into 3D parts for CNC machining.

Autosketch does fine for all the 3 functions above, and I can't say that I feel the program is missing any functions or needs major improvement. However I'm concerned about the future of the package as the development of it is either frozen or very slow, so I'm interested in what other 2D packages people are using.

I just tried the free version of SolidEdge mentioned in a previous post, and maybe I should be more patient, but it seemed like overkill for 2D work- 238Mbytes to download, sluggish to start and run and looked pretty hard to learn, so I bailed out after spending about an hour with it. I guess if you have really sophisticated 2D needs maybe it has some powerful features, but I favor "lean, mean and easy to use" and it didn't seem like that kind of package.

Anybody have comments on other 2D CAD packages?

Paul T.

I love my Autosketch 2.1! Everything else sucks.

Lance

Paul,
I too have tried the Solidedge program but have the opposite opinion. while it was indeed slow to start, after doing a couple of their tutorials I was able to groove with it quite well. (But I also have a lot of experience with 3d cad so I REALLY like the way I was able to create relations between lines and things.) I would suggest giving it another try and work through of the tutorals. Fortunately it doesn't run as slow as it loads! Besides the price was hard to beat.

Brian

RdHawg, maybe I'm too impatient and jumped out of Solidedge too quickly, I'll see if I can steal some time to give it another shot.

Is there anyone that's used both Solidedge and Progecad and can give us the pluses and minuses of both packages?

I'll have to say that for simple 2.5D designs (brackets, panels, etc.) Autosketch works pretty well and I don't have much to complain about, I'm just concerned its going to dissapear at some point since it doesn't seem to be under development any longer.

Paul T.