Autocad and Creo Free Equivalents?

[Dr_GMJNParticipant @dr_gmjn]

All,

I've been out of action in terms of machining recently due to a string of health issues (including but not limited to a broken foot sustained while bringing a giant Lego set up to the house on Christmas day!).

I got a new laptop for Christmas, and am in the process of getting everything set up ready for a new era of organised files, having everything inone place and all that.

Problem is CAD…I've used Autocad for work since 1993, and ProE/Creo since 1997. These days what I do on CAD at work is very limited, but I still find it very useful for model engineering and modelling for 3D printing. My son is at a technical school for his GCSE's, and we currently use Fusion on an education license. It's "OK" for me, but I do struggle a bit, and it gets frustrating. Trouble is, un-learning a software package isn't easy for a 51 year old like me. And if I do happen to need to CAD at work, swapping back to Creo is a disaster for a hour or so.

I don't want to use my work laptop (and CAD) for home use, so:

Questions:

1) Is there a free Autocad (ancient release) available, or other 2D CAD package that's free, that is based on Autocad? Compatibility with .dxf/dwg would be an advantage.

2) Same question for Creo/ProE?

Thanks in advance.

[Dr_GMJNParticipant @dr_gmjn]

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Can't help much with the 2D but good to see you around these parts again, hope the foot and whatever else heals soon.

[Dr_GMJNParticipant @dr_gmjn]

Posted by JasonB on 29/12/2021 19:46:07:

Can't help much with the 2D but good to see you around these parts again, hope the foot and whatever else heals soon.

Thanks Jason. Hopefully a series of random things that will sort themselves out!

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

QCAD is proving pretty useable for this veteran ACAD user :

**LINK** : https://www.qcad.org/en/

MichaelG.

[Dr_GMJNParticipant @dr_gmjn]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 29/12/2021 20:28:51:

QCAD is proving pretty useable for this veteran ACAD user :

**LINK** : https://www.qcad.org/en/

MichaelG.

Thanks Michael, looks promising, will give it a go!

[Andy_GParticipant @andy_g]

Posted by Dr_GMJN on 29/12/2021 19:17:04:

swapping back to Creo is a disaster for a hour or so.

I was going to suggest Fusion 360! I also used Creo at work and found switching between the two fairly painless after the initial 30 second blank stare

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

I have been using FreeCAD for a few weeks so still learning the software but looks promising.

Emgee

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Nano cad is free and very similar to older autocad. It won't do tangent to 2 circles but I can live with that

[Andy CarlsonParticipant @andycarlson18141]

+1 for QCAD. I moved to it when DraftSight became unfree. DS is an AutoCAD clone and QCAD is not so it took a little while for me to find out how to do things quickly in QCAD.

The free QCAD only does DXF. If you have DWGs that you want to use then look up the free ODA file converter.

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