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DraftSight! You could be so much better if.....
Updated October 09, 2023

DraftSight! You could be so much better if.....

Paul Karnopp, PE | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Paid

Overall Satisfaction with DraftSight

We use it for Industrial automation design. We use it for complex wiring diagrams and industrial control panel layout.
  • Reads and writes Autocad files without a problem.
  • Flexible user interface with lots of options.
  • Good tools for 2D design.
  • 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.
  • Text search and replace
  • Layout tabs and management
  • Block management
  • Print management
  • The price is good compared to AutoCAD, but the software is not as polished and bug free as AutoCAD
AutoCAD. DraftSight is a better CAD software that can handle our CAD needs at a very reasonable price. These CAD products are either very limited or crippled, or are very expensive.

Do you think DraftSight delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with DraftSight's feature set?

Yes

Did DraftSight live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of DraftSight go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy DraftSight again?

Yes

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.

Using DraftSight

2 - Engineering
1 - Time to play with it to get it to work.
  • 2D line drawings
  • 2D layout drawings
  • Text Bill of Materials
  • Use layouts for different sheets in a drawing
It's less expensive than Autocad

Using DraftSight

Quality control on the software is very poor. The text search and replace is barely useable. The switching between Layouts is very clunky and needs to be fixed.
ProsCons
Like to use
Feel confident using
Unnecessarily complex
Not well integrated
Inconsistent
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
Lots to learn
  • Printing has improved
  • Text search and replace is barely useable
  • Moving between Layouts is terrible
  • Choosing text for editing. It does not clear the last texted that you edited and gets messed up with the next operation like MOVE or COPY.
  • I don't want HomeByMe or 3D CONTENTCENTRAL OR Design Resources up all the time but I can't shut it off permantly.
  • The Options Menu section is very hard to find things in
  • The Print Configuration Manager does not work well when you are sharing CAD drawings among different users. It doesn't remember the settings.
  • If all your layouts need the same print configuration and you have a lot of them, the Print Configuration screen makes it very hard and clunky to configure that.