[sdiy] Free CAD

[stew]

Hi Thomas,

We tried a few CAD programs where I work and ended up using QCAD. It's well worth the $34. We do panel designs for our custom products and send the .DXF file to our engraving lady. It does everything we need to do and after a small learning curve is quite easy to use and intuitive

I've been using it at home to do synth panel designs and it's been great. I have a library of parts like knobs and sockets so I can see what the panel will look like, and then can just hide them and have the drill/cut out layer for manufacturing.

Regards,
Stewart.



> Thomas Strathmann <thomas at pdp7.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2/19/11 10:38 , Mike Gorman wrote:
> > For a useful CAD program, I've started using QCAD from Ribbonsoft:
> >
> > http://www.qcad.org/
> >
> > I'd tried a few different "Free" CAD programs before I found this one. 
> The
> > trial mode is a little awkward, as it closes every 10 minutes, but 
> it's
> > enough to see how useful a tool it is. There are versions for Windows, 
> OSX
> > and Linux, as well as an Open Source version that is a little bit 
> behind in
> > releases from the full version.
> 
> I came across that one, but gave up pretty soon after I realized that 
> the free version has a very odd build system that consists of a bunch of 
> 
> shell scripts. But because it is the only CAD program besides SketchUp 
> (although I have a feeling I could just use Blender for the sort of 
> thing SektchUp does well, have to see how it goes) that came up in this 
> thread I'll probably have another look at building for Mac OS X soon. 
> Thanks to everyone who suggested a solution!
> 
> 	Thomas
> 
> -- 
> Thomas S. Strathmann                            http://pdp7.org/blog/
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