Drafting Software!

[tatso7]

Hello gun people! Happy New Year to all! Im looking for suggestion on a Drafting Software that is not cost prohibitive. AutoCAD and Solidwork is just to pricy for a hobby. Theres Freecad and Beckercad but I dont have experience with those. Any suggestion is very much appreciated.

[Scotty]

Are you doing mechanical or civil? Solidworks has a maker edition that's like $100 per year but is not compatible with full versions. Autodesk has Fusion 360 for makers for free, with limitations. These are basically home hobby use, not business use.

[ibanezfoo]

Really depends on what your end goal is. There are a variety of open source programs you can use for free. Are you doing 3D modeling? Architecture? Mechanical? You want to print out sheets? I work for a big fabrication and construction company and we use a lot of design software.

[67Cuda]

I'm using the Fusion360 for personal use. Your limited to 10 active files at a time, so you'll need to manage them if you need to do more. Probably affect assemblies too.

[C.G.]

I use FreeCad. There are many tutorials on Youtube to get you started.

[Big Chudungus]

Hello gun people! Happy New Year to all! Im looking for suggestion on a Drafting Software that is not cost prohibitive. AutoCAD and Solidwork is just to pricy for a hobby. Theres Freecad and Beckercad but I dont have experience with those. Any suggestion is very much appreciated.

Student Editions of both Solidworks ($49/yr single install) and Autodesk products (FREE for "students) Revit, Autocads(there are 1/2 dozen types), Inventor, etc. are Full Power on your PC, only thing is they "paint" files as Student Edition and will jam up any Full Lic big money system. Yeah, Autodesk will give you ALL their top programs for free! Solidworks Student is also their top tier package with all the fluid, heat, stress, motion, materials etc included.

Good part is even The Pros will rebuild the same part/drawing several times, and once you figure out WTF you really need to do, you will be able to do it quickly and accurately on a full Lic system "for reals". CAD is less like sculpting or home building, and more like learning a gymnastics move or learning a musical instrument. Plan on LOTS of repetition of same thing. One of best tips I got from Solidworks instructor is do NOT try to fix a problem in a project too hard. Either make copy and delete stuff or start all over from scratch. Even The Pros will typically only understand WTF they really want to do, design intent-wise, after a few complete rebuilds from scratch.

To get Student Editions you just need to at a minimum be "enrolled at accredited 2 or 4 year college". That can be registering for one class at Community College (which you withdraw from soon after). IIRC Autodesk gives you 2yr lic, and Solidworks lets you buy a 2nd one year Lic which you have up to a year to start the clock ticking.

AFAIK, neither cares much or has anyway to check if the person using Student Edition is the actual official Student who they somehow checked is an official student at the college.

While I admire the effort, Freecad is still not ready, and in general CAD is hard enough to learn without wondering "is it me, or is it this program". Even with Solidworks half the time I try to do something on a model it doesn't seem to work, then I make the simplest test project to do the action, then for unknown reason it actually works on my real project.

In general, Solidworks AKA CADesign is for when you don't know WTF it will be. Autocad AKA CADrafting is what you use when you do know WTF it will be, because its new version of ongoing project, and just need to make the paperwork nice. Guys that map out office floor plans, or design computer chip printed circuits, will use Drafting. Guys that design suspensions or guns will use Design.
Autodesk Revit (BIM) is sorta 1/2 way between IMO, with a bunch of pre-programed building specific features like I guess it could map out Standard Wood (or metal) Framing members in a wall once you spec the doors and windows.

[ibanezfoo]

Student Editions of both Solidworks ($49/yr single install) and Autodesk products (FREE for "students) Revit, Autocads(there are 1/2 dozen types), Inventor, etc. are Full Power on your PC, only thing is they "paint" files as Student Edition and will jam up any Full Lic big money system. Yeah, Autodesk will give you ALL their top programs for free! Solidworks Student is also their top tier package with all the fluid, heat, stress, motion, materials etc included.

Good part is even The Pros will rebuild the same part/drawing several times, and once you figure out WTF you really need to do, you will be able to do it quickly and accurately on a full Lic system "for reals". CAD is less like sculpting or home building, and more like learning a gymnastics move or learning a musical instrument. Plan on LOTS of repetition of same thing. One of best tips I got from Solidworks instructor is do NOT try to fix a problem in a project too hard. Either make copy and delete stuff or start all over from scratch. Even The Pros will typically only understand WTF they really want to do, design intent-wise, after a few complete rebuilds from scratch.

To get Student Editions you just need to at a minimum be "enrolled at accredited 2 or 4 year college". That can be registering for one class at Community College (which you withdraw from soon after). IIRC Autodesk gives you 2yr lic, and Solidworks lets you buy a 2nd one year Lic which you have up to a year to start the clock ticking.

AFAIK, neither cares much or has anyway to check if the person using Student Edition is the actual official Student who they somehow checked is an official student at the college.

While I admire the effort, Freecad is still not ready, and in general CAD is hard enough to learn without wondering "is it me, or is it this program". Even with Solidworks half the time I try to do something on a model it doesn't seem to work, then I make the simplest test project to do the action, then for unknown reason it actually works on my real project.

In general, Solidworks AKA CADesign is for when you don't know WTF it will be. Autocad AKA CADrafting is what you use when you do know WTF it will be, because its new version of ongoing project, and just need to make the paperwork nice. Guys that map out office floor plans, or design computer chip printed circuits, will use Drafting. Guys that design suspensions or guns will use Design.
Autodesk Revit (BIM) is sorta 1/2 way between IMO, with a bunch of pre-programed building specific features like I guess it could map out Standard Wood (or metal) Framing members in a wall once you spec the doors and windows.

Revit doesnt do jack sht unless you use a bunch of addins. Its an architectural visualization tool pretending to be BIM design software. If you want to do any kind of mechanical or anything lord help you. haha I deal with that crap daily with models in the gigs just for the main file and however many other gigs worth of links and cad files. I just gave Autodesk another 3 million bucks for the pleasure of dealing with them. Plus a few hundred extra thousand bucks for 3rd party addins. But, its what the construction world uses so if thats what you want to do thats what you use.

Still need to know what OPs use case is. Laying out his house? Building something? Engineering?

[Big Chudungus]

I just gave Autodesk another 3 million bucks for the pleasure of dealing with them. Plus a few hundred extra thousand bucks for 3rd party addins. But, its what the construction world uses so if thats what you want to do thats what you use.

How are they squeezing that much out of you? Are you running like a thousand Seats worth of Licenses? Does Autodesk do actual CAD work or consulting in a major way?

I've heard is pretty common for 4 guys to "share" same License on a machine at work. AFAIK 20yrs ago you had to sign over your first born son to get a "seat locked" License for $20K/yr. Now everyone is defacto giving away their top tier stuff with Student Editions in a battle to gain all important Market Share, since Learning Curve is steep, so having a pool of guys that cut their teeth on SEs is what matters to employers who don't want to risk sinking $200K into a new hire to get them up to speed on The Other CAD app.

[ibanezfoo]

How are they squeezing that much out of you? Are you running like a thousand Seats worth of Licenses? Does Autodesk do actual CAD work or consulting in a major way?

I've heard is pretty common for 4 guys to "share" same License on a machine at work. AFAIK 20yrs ago you had to sign over your first born son to get a "seat locked" License for $20K/yr. Now everyone is defacto giving away their top tier stuff with Student Editions in a battle to gain all important Market Share, since Learning Curve is steep, so having a pool of guys that cut their teeth on SEs is what matters to employers who don't want to risk sinking $200K into a new hire to get them up to speed on The Other CAD app.

We have a couple hundred licenses of all the AEC stuff plus CAM, thousands of Build Unlimited licenses, etc. There is no more sharing licenses. We used to use a local license server that users could "check out" a license so we could get by with a lot less. Nowdays its all named licensing per user. Plus we often have to supply licenses for subcontractors on our projects. For a company with our kind of income Autodesk keeps wanting us to switch over to a revenue percentage cost because they will make a lot more than 3 million haha They'd probably make more just off the Tesla factories we built. lol

Younger guys generally pick this stuff up pretty quick since they are raised on computers nowdays. We prefer to pluck them from the field since they know how buildings go together and all we have to do is teach them how to draw. Usually they pick it up pretty quick. We have gone the route of getting CAD trained people with no field experience and it very rarely works out. They have no actual real world experience with what parts and fittings to use so pretty much everything they draw is wrong... yes they are even given specs and still can't manage it for some reason. They don't know how the field actually assembles things so they struggle.

[Markbsae]

We have gone the route of getting CAD trained people with no field experience and it very rarely works out. They have no actual real world experience with what parts and fittings to use so pretty much everything they draw is wrong... yes they are even given specs and still can't manage it for some reason. They don't know how the field actually assembles things so they struggle.

I totally agree. I used to run a fabrication shop and getting new engineers to understand that just because you can draw it doesn't mean we can build it. They would draw things with a bolt featured that had no access. It could be there but you can't get it there. I also dealt with a guy who was importing a 600' overhead conveyor into an existing site drawing that interfered with a building column that was a 14"x14"x1" I beam with a 36" diameter concrete base. For every straight run the conveyor had a cut to length section for fine tuning but he instead moved the column in the drawing to make it work. Some people lack the spatial relations and mechanical aptitude to think in a virtual world as well as the physical.

[yellowsulphur]

I use FreeCad. There are many tutorials on Youtube to get you started.

Version 1.0 was a nice update.