Topic: FREE or VERY Cheap CAD Prg?

[craigr]

I have another existing topic about whether to upgrade or not. I believe THAT decision has been made. - To hopefully get more suggestions on anther question, I figured I would post here for those that weren't part of the other topic.

   I think I may have management talked into upgrading to 2013 IF I can cut down on the number of 'casual users'. We have a few people that use CAD only to strip floor plans of everthing but walls, doors, etc...  They then export the floorplan to a .jpg to use in their graphics package.

   I was thinking that there may be a FREE CAD prg out there that they can use to clean up / strip floor plans then export to a .jpg to use for their graphics. This would save us a few seats of AutoCAD. Before I spend a bunch of time downloading and trying out different softwares, do any of you have a suggestion?

I did a 'Google' on it and it looks like 'ProgeCAD' is rated very high, but it isn't FREE for commercial use.

Any other suggestions?

craigr

[cadtag]

Draftsight is free for any use, commercial or otherwise.  the free version lacks programmability, so is no more extensible than LT

[Jeff H]

I think nanoCad has a API but have used product for 2 or 3 minutes, and seemed okay.

[the ber]

Nanocad is definitely worth a shot. It's really fine for a free program. I do miss that it doesn't have a print-to-pdf driver (or I haven't found it yet) but that's just quibbling.

[Keith™]

Install CutePDF and plot to it

[LiteD]

DraftSight has much wider export capabilities compare to nanoCAD. PDF and raster formats are among them, but if you need wider command set and want to create small utility or add-on, the nanoCAD is the only option. You can use VBScript, JavaScript or .NET to do the job.

[Didge]

"DoubleCAD XT" is a very capable and free AutoCAD clone, well worth investigating.

[SDETERS]

I think there is a solidedge free 2D package out there.

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/velocity/solidedge/free2d/