Likelihood to Recommend We put it through its paces with our drawings and it works fine. We do a lot of wiring diagrams and industrial control panel layout drawings, so we use a lot of its 2D capabilities. I would not use it in a multi-user environment where you have multiple designers working on one project at a time. This software makes no provisions for allowing multiple users to work at the same time on the same drawing and has no native version control. And because of their poor software control, DraftSight many times put out versions that are "crashy", which would make a lot of people very unproductive very quickly. I would look at other products for larger projects like that.
Read full review It appears to be evolving more towards large users with the 3D EXPERIENCE, while becoming less focused on small users like me, becoming more expensive and limiting the number of cores while most PC's now can easily run 8 cores. Of course it is great for non-linear and highly non-linear scenarios, and especially good at combing a huge variety of element types. I guess it is not best suited for linear analysis due to its high price, but even in this case you have to put in the balance the ability to make the best choice of finite elements and being so straightforward about actually using them.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Create and modify designs from within the CAE environment. Although it has very basic capabilities, it is quite capable of generating 2D and 3D parametric designs. I have even generated some "fancy" designs which ended up being a challenge for draftsmen in specialized solid modeling CAD. I also like the fact that being somewhat limited, it forces you to stick to simple and effective design. Addressing structural instabilities such as snap-through or buckling. This was such a challenge when I started using Abaqus, I had to take a course on "achieving convergence". Coming from there, I can see how SIMULIA has become increasingly able to give you the numerical tools or tricks you need to achieve convergence consistently. In the past I often feared running into different convergence issues as I moved across different produce sizes, leading to changes in the analysis approach, which would make it more difficult to compare them. I just went through a 12-size family in 5 dimensional scenarios each, without a single issue after ensuring convergence with the first couple of sizes. Beautiful pictures. The post-processing of results enables me to generate highly illustrative, fairly easy to understand and elegant presentations, by controlling transparency and results shown independently on different groups, which I can select by material, location, etc. Read full review Cons Draftsight could run better on lower performace machines, even on high performance machines there can be some lag now and again. There used to be a more basic subscription version which was perfect for our needs, now lowest subscription is more expensive. Bringing back the standard version would be great. Including hash pattern files would be very useful. Read full review Exporting sketches. For example, you can import dxf for sketches, but you can't export dxf. This is a major drawback for me, because I often communicate with customers through dwg or dxf sketches. If I can't export dxf, my sketches in CAE are "dead". I have to redo them in the dwg sketch. It is so inconvenient, I often end up making the sketches in DraftSight, so I can export them to CAE but I still have the originals in dwg format. CAE doesn't remember element type assignment by sets. Sometimes when I reconfigure or modify a design, I regenerate sets and surfaces, and this in turn updates material assignments, interactions and loads almost automatically. This doesn't happen with element types, so I often end up submitting a job with the wrong element types. Mesh regeneration and re-mapping in 2D within the job. I need this a lot to model axisymmetric assemblies with sharp indentation the destroys the original mesh. I had it in MSC/MARC and it worked great. Abaqus has it only for 3D. I have tried alternatives like lagrangian/eulerian and eulerian domains but it's still more complicated. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Uday Singh Consulting Chemical/Environmental Engineer
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Extremely well organized and friendly, reflecting the latest approaches in solid modeling and adding the FEA part so seamlessly for the user. It's a joy to use. I'm aware some people would complain about the meshing capabilities and thus prefer using HYPERMESH. Fortunately not my case. I did wish I had HYPERMESH a couple of times, but for most of my projects CAE meshing is fine.
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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.
Read full review Performance In general it's very quick to load drawings...now it depends a lot on the file we're opening or working on.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review I keep getting the feeling that it is drifting away from small users. I don't feel so comfortable with the SWYM community approach. I felt much better when you could just email or call HKS and you would feel like you were talking to a real expert who understood your situation. When I was reassigned to reseller in Argentina, which is like the other side of the world for me, I appreciated the cultural closeness, but I had to say goodbye to the level of support I had from HKS and learned to "support myself."
Read full review In-Person Training Based on some knowledge of AutoCad, using Draftsight took a short time before I felt comfortable using it.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review MARC can do the job from an FEA point of view. It even appears better at a couple of things such as 2D remeshing and surviving with highly distorted meshes. So I regard it as a very competitive alternative. I prefer SIMULIA because the GUI is so much better, especially the ability to create actual parametric designs in CAE. ANSYS doesn't cut it for me. I tried it for 1 month and I would see how much I would struggle with convergence in large deformation and large displacement situations with hyperelastic materials with which I have to deal all the time. Also the GUI is not as well built an integrated as in SIMULIA.
Read full review Scalability As a startup, we really appreciate scalable software or tools, and because we use it for diverse types of projects, flexibility is key.
Uday Singh Consulting Chemical/Environmental Engineer
Read full review Return on Investment I have been able to save countless hours by making drawing corrections myself. Previously, I would have had to wait hours or days to get drawings back from our customers. In the past year I would say that DraftSight has saved roughly 200 hours. That time would have been spent waiting for our customers to make corrections and then send them back to us. Read full review I don't even bother doing an ROI. Without SIMULIA I would be pretty much out of business. Except for the fact that I could still have an alternative with MSC/MARC. Price is becoming a more difficult hurdle for small users. It appears I have survived because there was a 50% discount on my small 6-token package. Without this special price I would have to close my business. I'm currently exploring alternatives. A more flexible scheme enabling to add tokens over short periods of time or paying per use could be an interesting possibility. Read full review ScreenShots