Item: DraftSight
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with DraftSight

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use DraftSight to fill a gap in our 2D drafting and design needs. We create/manipulate/edit 2D flat patterns and DXFs of parts we create in other CAD packages in DraftSight and share those flat patterns with vendors and with other internal departments to manufacture the products we design and sell.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Simple yet powerful user interface.
Common Command-line functionality for those of us who learned on other 2D CAD Software and prefer the speed of typing.
Smart Dimensioning is an improvement over other 2D packages.

Cons

The layers palette icons are confusing and it requires too many steps to create a new layer. I shouldn't have to open the layer manager to create a layer.
Converting splines to polylines and arcs (quickly and easily) that can be cut on CNC equipment. This is a nut no CAD package I've come across has been able to crack to my expectations. I need less "workarounds" and a more straightforward workflow with tunable options for this very frequent process.

Return on Investment

DraftSight being a couple thousand cheaper than the other big 2D drafting packages allows us to manipulate the DXFs we need at a fraction of the price.
Since DraftSight implements many of the same command line commands as the other large 2D CAD package it saved us time in training employees with prior experience in said software as they felt right at home using DraftSight right away.

Alternatives Considered

AutoCAD, Inkscape and SketchUp

Each of these has their pros and cons but DraftSight is the most complete and capable package for accurate 2D designs at a low price point. It does 99.999% of what we need it to and is easily affordable.

Other Software Used

SOLIDWORKS, Siemens Solid Edge, GIMP, Inkscape

Likelihood to Recommend

DraftSight is well suited to creating simple 2D designs. Quickly drawing a prototype/napkin sketch to illustrate a design to someone.
DraftSight is also great for creating and editing DXFs to prepare them for CNC equipment. We share a lot of DXF files with vendors for parts we can't make in house.

I wouldn't use DraftSight for large assembly 3D design as it lacks parametrics.

Comments

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DraftSight - The complete affordable package for 2D drafting and design

Software Version