Item: DraftSight
Rating: 9
Author: Thomas Strausbaugh

Overall Satisfaction with DraftSight

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I and one other person use DraftSight extensively for creating wiring and flow diagrams. I find the program to be easily learnable and very flexible. It's a great CAD compatible drawing software and the only reason I didn't give it a 10/10 is that it's no longer free. I would say that the price is fair though.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Dimensions are easy to find.
Manipulation of entities is easy and intuitive.
Printing has gotten easier.

Cons

Understanding difference between model view and layout view.
Entity snap often causes more trouble than it's worth.
Some functions are difficult to find in the menus and learning command line is difficult.

Return on Investment

Great documentation of systems.
Creates great visuals of systems.
Allows me to quickly answer questions about a given system.

Alternatives Considered

DraftSight is cheaper. Although it is probably every bit as powerful (and more,) I don't need to go so deep. Whereas WireCad required me to enter a lot of settings and information I didn't care about; DraftSight allows me to do as much or as little as I want without pestering me for details.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Office 2016

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for any drawing. Layering is very useful for the ability to quickly generate views of different aspects of a drawing. Again, I use this mostly for wiring diagrams, which are easily adaptable to the use of layers for different types of wire/cable. Text is sometimes difficult to work with as far as understanding sizing and justification.

Comments

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Great for wiring diagrams!

Software Version