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CAD Software

NostregarNostregar Registered User regular
edited January 2011 in Help / Advice Forum
My question is a pretty simple one: does anybody know of a decent and free 2D CAD program? I only need to be able to use it to edit existing files, and even then it's really only going to be to fix formatting on text boxes and such.

I know there are a lot of free ones out there, but I was wondering if there are any that are really good or, alternatively, really bad.

Nostregar on

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    RobmanRobman Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I don't know about the 2D market, but you really get what you pay for with 3D CAD software - expect to pay dollar dollar bills.

    Do you need a 2D CAD program or an image editing program? There's the GIMP for image editing.

    Robman on
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    mullymully Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I also need a 2D CAD program that can scale and do exact measurements, for a friend.

    Will root around as well and let you know if I find anything, Nostregar.

    mully on
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    NostregarNostregar Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Robman wrote: »
    I don't know about the 2D market, but you really get what you pay for with 3D CAD software - expect to pay dollar dollar bills.

    Do you need a 2D CAD program or an image editing program? There's the GIMP for image editing.

    Well, since it may help here is the situation:

    I work for a translation company and among other things we translate the text on CAD drawings. The person doing the actual translation has regular CAD software and that's not a problem. It's just that when we get it back from him, some of the text formatting isn't quite right and doesn't fit inside the boxes anymore. So, we just need a program that will let us open the CAD file and tweak the text formatting - that's it. It isn't really worth the money to buy a CAD program since we don't need much functionality out of it.



    Also, thanks Mully!

    Nostregar on
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    EtheaEthea Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    You might find something on http://www.blender3darchitect.com/2010/07/list-of-open-source-and-free-alternatives-to-autocad/ that will solve your problem.

    The primary problem will be how well they support the dwg and dxf file formats, and if they even render the text the same ( font, etc ).

    Ethea on
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    focused7focused7 Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/draftsight-overview/

    By the same people who make SolidWorks

    focused7 on
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    ImprovoloneImprovolone Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Google Sketchup?

    Improvolone on
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