DIY CAD Software

[Egzoset]

Salutations everyone,

I visited a few web sites such as the home of AutoCAD and similar lately, this failed to convince me i should stop using MS-Paint for sketching because i was expecting after all those years there had to be some great FreeWare/GNU tools, whatever.

Maybe there are members who can think of alternatives, i'm always open to civilized exchanges and discussions so i'd welcome suggestions right now, naturally!



It's a modest i3 with Win7 on SSD but Win10 arrives soon so i may want to perform a fresh install on another unit instead and hence why not yet another sample of CAD software with it! Though a Linux Ubuntu scenario would make sense too.

Good day, have fun!!

 

[pop22]

Why would you use a CAD program for sketching? If your looking for a pro level drawing/paint program. look at Corel Painter 2015. I've used Corel draw for many years to design t-shirts, posters and business cards and flyers. This program is a 10 pound hammer, so expect a learning curve. But once you've used this or whatever Adobe sells ( as a former tech that had to deal with Adobe, they couldn't pay me to take their software, I don't care how good it is! ), you'll wished you'd gotten it sooner!

here's a link: http://www.painterartist.com/us/product/paint-program/?trkid=USsemKWS

Salutations everyone,

I visited a few web sites such as the home of AutoCAD and similar lately, this failed to convince me i should stop using MS-Paint for sketching because i was expecting after all those years there had to be some great FreeWare/GNU tools, whatever.

Maybe there are members who can think of alternatives, i'm always open to civilized exchanges and discussions so i'd welcome suggestions right now, naturally!



It's a modest i3 with Win7 on SSD but Win10 arrives soon so i may want to perform a fresh install on another unit instead and hence why not yet another sample of CAD software with it! Though a Linux Ubuntu scenario would make sense too.

Good day, have fun!!

 

[Egzoset]

Salutations Pop22,

Thanks for the provided link, hoping it has spiral/helix macros built-in!...

Good day, have fun!!

 

[HotBunz]

Well I use SolidWorks for all of my CAD needs when I have a project for my little CNC milling machine. Have you looked at Google SketchUp.......it's a neat little free 3D rendering program.

 

[Egzoset]

Salutations HotBunz,

...SolidWorks... ...SketchUp...

That sounds familiar and now that you've mentioned these i imagine perhaps "CNC" should be part of my keywords for a future search soon! Thanks, i like that input! By the way perhaps i should have mentioned the attempts i've made so far: AutoCAD, FreeCAD, OpenSCAD and BRL-CAD, maybe a couple more... As a matter of fact "CNC CAD GNU" or similar might prove interesting, i'll need to look into that 'cause the old ways have shown their limits!

Good day, have fun!!

 

[HotBunz]

What are you trying to do? Maybe that would help others with ideas for you. Do you need 3D rendering or just simple 2D drawings?

 

[Egzoset]

Hi again HotBunz,

What are you trying to do?

Illustrations often prove useful in communicating ideas and my old ways have grown insufficient. Or not "sexy" perhaps, hard to tell so i'll pick both theories! Hence my answer would be to "update" my graphic resources i guess!

Maybe that would help others with ideas for you.

If there's such an opportunity at hand i'd certainly be a fool not to investigate the matter further. So i've shared a few bits of information before which happened to scatter across the net as topics accumulated over the years.

Recently i tried to sort it out and draw some final conclusions relative to my "Plan-B" (...), while now i must find out how to make the transition to "Plan-A" which i've managed to define at last - because i find necessary to have a plan to begin with, so i toyed with a sort of prototype allowing my imagination to wander and even feed "fantasy" visualizations, all this about the type of cannabic vaporizer i may actually require.



Lucky me i could find out exactly what i want vs what i must reject, so naturally i'm between 2 chairs again, though i've had success lately trying to improve my fate in this matter, and i have (sure did!), but that's still only a "Plan-B" and i want the full treat! So there are a couple scenarios on my mind, with litle satisfying means to communicate them appropriately in a forum. It's certainly not about launching some CNC factory chain or else, although i'd like to see that, but the real thing is my "experiments" always been a hobby and that's a keyword i must insist on before any misunderstanding occurs.

Do you need 3D rendering or just simple 2D drawings?

Anything allowing me to transmit visual information and not become too involving. My computer supports simple 3D i'll say, but if there are no spiral functions to begin with then that's a no-brainer for me (no can do!)... I'm confident some piece of software awaits my evaluation somewhere that won't translate into elevated agravation. I'm hoping legacy GUI/Vector based skills will prove beneficial in the eventual updating process! Thanks.

Good day, have fun!!

 

[Ozone69]

I don't know if either of these would fit the bill, but a couple open source to check out.

Blender - Not sure how it works for 2d drawing, but from what I've read it's one of the leading open source 3d modeling packages. www.blender.org

GIMP (Graphical Image Manipulation Project) - I've used this one a lot, but only for simple picture editing and not really drawing. Basically it's kind of the open source version of Adobe Photoshop. www.gimp.org

 

[Egzoset]

Salutations Ozone69,

...one of the leading open source 3d modeling packages. www.blender.org

Good, i'll need to check that too! The truth is i got buzy this afternoon:

Now that would be something to put in CAD format! Can i do it with Bender? There's a conical profile, a tripod translucent structure, metal shades/textures, etc... Thank you!

Good day, have fun!!





ADDENDUM


I searched around about Google/Trimble SketchUp but just prefered to skip their nozy form, then found that SolidWorks only offers yet another 30 days "Trial" sample. Etc.

Blender v2.75 is GNU/GPL and worry-free in comparison, at least initially (so far)... It survived the installation procedure and i could move an object in 3D perspective in minutes so i guess that will be fine. Now the learning-curve climbing must begin...

Thank you Ozone69.

 

[wwwillie]

Not a CAD program per say but it is a powerful graphics program and it's free. Adobe is/was offering CS2 for free, and that includes Photoshop V9.0. I use it all the time. I have CS5 at work so having CS2 on my laptop helps a lot.
If you need PCB type of CAD there is Eagle CAD lite that is free I think and has all the libraries too.