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Draftsight no longer free

W

wfpelletier

Senior Member
I don't know if anyone else besides me has been using the AutoCad-like Draftsight for 2D work, but you may be interested to know that it is no longer free. We have been using Draftsight at my workplace mostly for working with legacy AutoCad drawings, and found this out when we were trying to install it on another computer. This is a link to a discussion on the SolidWorks forum regarding this news: https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/230270. (This change might have happened in February.)
 
W

wfpelletier

Senior Member
idslk said:
maybe this is an alternative? DoubleCAD XT v5
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I just gave this a try. It is a good looking software, but when I tried opening a few of our facility floor plans with DoubleCAD, it just crashed. It seems to be able to open up smaller DWG drawings, however.
 
VoltsAndBolts

VoltsAndBolts

Senior Member
wfpelletier said:
I don't know if anyone else besides me has been using the AutoCad-like Draftsight for 2D work, but you may be interested to know that it is no longer free. We have been using Draftsight at my workplace mostly for working with legacy AutoCad drawings, and found this out when we were trying to install it on another computer. This is a link to a discussion on the SolidWorks forum regarding this news: https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/230270. (This change might have happened in February.)
Click to expand...

Yes I saw this not to long ago myself... I have often used it instead of AutoCad. I guess it's time to seek out the best alternative.
 
Alexander

Alexander

Senior Member
I ditched Awfuldesk a few years ago for many reasons, my blood boils thinking about it. Went with Bricscad and its a brilliant alternative, although its not free, reasonable price for basic 2d package.
Solid Edge still do a free 2D cad which is good.
 
DavidJ

DavidJ

Administrator
Staff member
From Dassault Systemes Web site
All free versions of DraftSight (2018 or earlier) will cease to run after 12/31/2019.
 
simonb65

simonb65

Alibre Super User
DavidJ said:
All free versions of DraftSight (2018 or earlier) will cease to run after 12/31/2019.
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I know its free, but to just stop an existing application running past a specific date I find very sad. I can understand them saying there is no more support, run at your own risk (I still run Win 2000 on my server and a number of WinXP machines as hardware test stations with old bespoke VB5/VB6 programs running on them!), but to just stop running is like the underhand planned obsolescence of a perfectly good tool/product by the likes of a certain fruit based phone/pad company! It really makes me steer clear of these type of companies as I feel I'm being held hostage and my destiny is solely in their hands. The one reason I steer well clear of cloud based applications. Call me old fashioned, but when I buy or use something, I like to be the one who decides when and why I stop using it ... even if it was offered as free (that was their choice, not mine).
 
anson

anson

Member
I switched to LibreCAD and it works for everything I want to do. One drawback is layer management which I use a lot when going to our router. Otherwise I like most features better. I downloaded version2.2.0 from github.
 
jhiker

jhiker

Alibre Super User
nanoCAD looks OK though the latest completely free version is v5.0. Reads/writes dxf/dwg. No geometrical tolerancing with the free version but it looks fairly easy to use.
 
anson

anson

Member
Anybody still using draftsight? It still works here! I didn't try installing on additional computer though.
 
Idahoan

Idahoan

Member
I still use it occasionally, mostly to open old Auto CAD files. Tired this evening and it still opened up and runs fine.

Dave
 
NateLiquidGravity

NateLiquidGravity

Alibre Super User
I think eventually the free version of draftsight will require you to register it again and then it won't work. But I could be wrong.
 
Mika

Mika

Senior Member
It's not free, but it have samekinda licensing like Alibre. Pay it once, own it forever.
 
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