BricsCAD vs. DraftSight vs. Onshape

SMBs who do want to minimse their involvement with expensinve, inconvenient and bloated Autodesk products will find lots to love. The only hinderence is the market share of Autodesk means some 3rd party developers will not support it unfortunately, but it has it's own solutions to many things users of the AutoCAD ecosystem currenrtly rely on.

2D design work

3D design work

Large area (500m²+) analysis and assessment

From product design, including production drawings to lay out of large (10m x 1m footprint) layouts DraftSight is a cost effective solution providing all appropriate interfaces for BIM.

The level of detail during rendering (while it can be slow) is good for visualization and for use in installation and training materials

Incentivized

Onshape shall be used by organizations where cost is a major factor as the license is relatively competitive than the competition. Where Onshape , excels the most is the ability to be operational on any device with internet connection and webbrowser. Onshape doesn't require your hardware to be beefed with Graphic cards (if added better). Where onshape can be better. If they are able to include simulation packages bundled like SOLIDWORKS.

Incentivized

• 3D Modeling
• Machine learning / A.I.-assisted feature named PROPAGATE.

Incentivized

• You can easily bring in a dwg format drawing into the programme and it will display the information just as well as AutoCAD.
• The programme supports shortcut features or one-click buttons for the most commonly used operations.
• Script files can be used which is a bonus.

Incentivized

• Cloud-based infrastructure and collaboration is a primary benefit.
• The available documentation is extremely thorough.
• The ability to integrate with other software for simulation, renderings, etc. is fantastic.
• Not having to save and being able to clearly see versions and change history is excellent.

Incentivized

• there is not full compatibility with dynamic blocks but it isn't so bad -we can create them in AutoCAD and use them to some extent anyway
• it doesn't look as "sexy" and the interface looks kinda orimitive in some screens but the functionality is all there and the some
• there is the hurdle of users thinking they are getting a lesser product so more marketing pozazz is needed to get the message over it is a very capable product

• The text search and replace is very crude and barely works. Needs a major revamping.
• The layout tabs are very clunky and hard to use. Needs to be fixed.
• DraftSight will fix a problem in one version, mess it up in another version, then fix it again later on. And so forth, and so forth, and so forth. Very poor software update control.

Incentivized

• Dimensioning a hole feature in a drawing when there are multiple holes, the hole count does not parametrically update. For example, when there are 3x of the same hole, Onshape forces you to manually type in 3x instead of parametrically populating the hole count. This gets very dangerous if say, one of the 3x holes changes but you forget to update the 3x to 2x. Other CAD software does provide this.
• I know Onshape provides guidance on performance considerations and how to structure a project through their literature, however, a dedicated video from Onshape that directly addresses the guidelines on how to minimize file load and reload times would be beneficial to all future and current Onshape users. I think they should incorporate this directly in their training. Poindexter by Design went through the growing pains of this issue but through the Onshape literature and our own experiences we've developed guidelines on how to keep our Onshape performance maximized!

Incentivized

It has given us, a small startup, the ability to compete effectively with far larger competitors by evening the playing field at a low cost.

Incentivized

Familiarity and ability to work from any location. Also easy to cooperate with potential customers, existing customers, systems users, and fabricating shops. Most of the standard designs are now in On Shape and I would like to continue using it. It is easier to run versions to clarify imrovements to the previous designs

Incentivized

it's exteremly useable. AutoCAD users will carry over many eisting skills and learn some new ones on the cross over. It's fast adn lightweight meaning ot can be run on just about any PC. The help and support are realy good and problems are usually responded to within a day by experts.

Easy if you know how to use CAD software. But is not very difficult to learn using DraftSight if this is your first CAD software. As soon as you get in to it the work flow will save you a lot of time and its simple interface is very nice.

Incentivized

Onshape is great software and I have no trouble recommending it to CAD users and companies that need to do design work

Incentivized

Other than a bug created by a VAR tech support that didn't get resolved until I installed the next version, DraftSight has worked fine.

In general it's very quick to load drawings...now it depends a lot on the file we're opening or working on.

Incentivized

Technical support seems to be overseas with broken English and difficulty to read English. I asked for a trial license to try the fix but it was declined. Ask pratiksha.dahotre and gayatri.keskar for details. In summary, they released a broken version, I helped to fix by providing feedback and error logs. They claimed it is fixed but I can't test it.

Been fairly standard experience with support team. Issues have always been addressed, but is understandably focused on business side applications which typically has different issues than education applications. I have very few IT issues with the design side of the software, my issues are more often with the control of users and access

Incentivized

Based on some knowledge of AutoCad, using Draftsight took a short time before I felt comfortable using it.

Incentivized

I might be biased by coming from using three different CAD softwares in the past, so I already understood many modeling concepts, but the training OS offers is really good. Videos are clear, they explain operations in good detail and besides that OS has a really good help system that explains even more how every tool works.

Incentivized

Take time to get used to where commands are and how the interface can be customized to suit your needs and work style. The keyboard commands are very helpful and can make work more efficient if time is taken to learn them.

Incentivized

Onshape is revolutionary. Its advantage is that it can be used without having to download it. You are free to work wherever you want. This means that even if you take a vacation or attend a family event, your work will not be interrupted. You can still bring your work and complete it quickly.

Incentivized

Very cost-effective solution, it even supports pointclouds natively and is something we will investigate further as time goes on and may in fact utilise it to replace AutoCAD with 3rd party add-ins at some point in the future, and we hope it can further reduce costs in the long-run as it continues to develop and mature.

While SketchUp is free, DraftSights cost is minimal and its abilities are much greater. It is so much easier to layout and modifies a system design. Since DraftSight is compatible with all versions of CAD, it makes it easy to collaborate with customers on their specific system design. We spend less time and see greater sales on our projects.

I have used SOLIDWORKS for over four years, and the vault system is time intensive for control of design history, and revision management. I have used Pro-E for over four years, and this has the capability but is not user-friendly. Not needing high-end computers is another great reason to choose Onshape

Incentivized

It's a typical contract for cad software. It was inexpensive at the time I started. But now the more useful features are on the more premium (priced) version.

As a startup, we really appreciate scalable software or tools, and because we use it for diverse types of projects, flexibility is key.

Incentivized

Quite responsive when I have an issue, and with little to no delay in responding. They are professional and know the software so have been able to solve all of the issues that I have had with both using the software and also with making revisions as required. Non-technical issues like invoices have also been resolved quickly.

Incentivized

• Evaluation and budget management
• Better monitoring of projects
• Respect of execution deadlines

Incentivized

• Draftsight has been very cost effective, it was free a few years ago then £79 a year, which it still is if you have the standard version. Now the minium level is Profession edition at £159+ VAT per year. Which is still very good value for money, just more that what we currently pay with the standard licences we have.

Incentivized

• Super fast idea to concept parts and prototypes
• So easy to share things with co-workers or higher management that I do it all the time
• No, IT support is needed so no IT cost and no hassle working with in-house IT and their way of doing things

Incentivized