Librecad

[NimbleParticipant @nimble]

Has anyone had any experience with Librecad drawing program for 2D and orthagonal drafting. Is it easier to learn than other Freeware?

Regards, Nimble Neil

[NimbleParticipant @nimble]

Anybody used this software?

[An OtherParticipant @another21905]

Hi, Neil,

I played with it a bit while developing a software tool to generate Gcode directly from a PCB layout drawing – not happy with the usual offerings. LibreCad works, but 'up to a point', is my opinion. Its biggest problem seems to be that its development/update cycle seems to be painfully slow, so new versions don't appear often with improvements or bugfixes. It can't handle 3D.

I only wanted to produce 2D PCB layouts, but gave up on LibreCad eventually, and used the LibreOffice Draw app instead, which can be improved by adding the CADLO extension, and will give me the SVG files I needed at the time. I find this a useful tool for drawing purposes, with 2 decimal place accuracy, a good user interface, and easy to learn.

Sorry I can't tell you much more.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

LibreCAD is a fork of the community edition of QCAD. It differs slightly in look and feel, but is generally a few versions behind QCAD, and may have a few bugs of it's own. It's free as in beer and in speech. Nothing to lose by trying it apart from time.

How suitable it is depends on what you need! It's a fully competent 2D-CAD package reminiscent of Autosketch, and mostly complete – not needing much in the way of new gismos. It supports conventional 2D Technical Drawing rather than PCB layouts, gcode, etc. Like Autosketch (no longer available), it takes a simpler approach to 2D-CAD than AutoCAD, which is so feature rich that it's hard to learn. It's powerful enough for all my 2D-CAD requirements.

QCAD is a strong alternative to LibreCAD – the two are very similar. The community edition is also free.

I found it worth paying for QCAD-Pro, which is the same software plus several useful features. One of them is a tool for removing segments, which is a few clicks faster than LibreCAD, and it adds up. Otherwise, Pro supports more CAD file formats, can do simple isometric projections, faster bug fixes, and is generally worth having if the program is used often. The Pro licence is quite permissive, allowing the user to have several installations on Windows, Apple, and Linux.

There's a companion CAM package, but I've never used it.

I'm very happy with QCAD – it was my preferred 2D-CAD software before I owned a lathe! But it is what it is, a good 2D Technical Drawing package.

Dave

[egaParticipant @ega]

SOD:

You mentioned AutoSketch which I have been using intermittently since DOS days and which I think would meet the OP's requirements if it were free. I happily use version 9 on my Windows 10 PC.

Unfortunately, Autodesk ceased to support the program some time ago.

[Martin Johnson 1Participant @martinjohnson1]

I bought Qcad for about 30GBP 3 years ago. Generally very good as a 2D package and is also available at no extra cost in 32 or 64 bit, Windows and Linux options.

Changeover from Turbocad was pretty minimal.

Qcad at 30 quid seemed a more reliable option than free Librecad to me.

Martin

[Pete WhiteParticipant @petewhite15172]

Plus one for Martins comments. I have used qcad for years, it is very good as a 2d option. I even bought it and being a linux follower for 20 plus years I am not accustomed to buying software.

I have found a big issue with Librecad, in that I has a problem selection lines, at certain scales. If you do a select rectangle is is ok, or zoom to a rediculous scale select works, never got to the bottom off the issue. It makes it quite unusable for me. This is on a chromebook, Qcad won't work on the Chomebook.

The Qcad option is so much more user friendly to me.

Pete

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