Any simple drafting software out there?

Hi Ronnie, try this

Cheers Ian Sutherland (Oz)

Thanks for the link Ian ! Ronnie

If you can find a copy of Generic CADD somewhere (Ebay?), grab it. It is a full blown 2-D cad program but is very easy to get started with. It is an older DOS program but runs well under both OS/2, W95 and W98. Maybe more recent Windoze versions but I haven't had cause to try. If you can get with the manuals all the better although the on-line help is not bad. I have used it for averything from Christmas package tags to quicky shop sketches to designing our house. I have tried several of the current free or inexpensive packages and have yet to find anything better.

Autodesk bought it out years ago and then killed it because it had 90% of the functionality of ACAD for 10% of the price.

Ted

I agree. Been using DeltaCAD & its predeceasor for years. Excellent, simple 2D program. Printing takes a little getting used to.

Ted Edwards wrote

Is that the one they bought out, then called it Autosketch. AutoSketch is a Great program, in fact fabulous program for 2d and under $100.

I doubt it will ever really be improved beyond where it is, because then they would infringe a whole lot more on their ACLt sales.

CL

Might do a web search for Draft Choice, simple to use, and has just about all the functions you'd want if you dig throught he menu's. Works well, but maybe a little pricey at first glance. I've been using it for more than five years, haven't found anything that I needed more.

Ted, I had that Generic cadd II. It was great. It had more useful features that Autocad version 9 which was out at about the same time. I designed a radius staircase to be built in steel for a megabuck house I was framing. The owner just couldn't come up with one and we didn't want to wait anylonger. I designed it with a 10' inside radius and a 20' radius outside, was 6' wide at the bottom and 4' wide at the top. About a 12' rise. I used a 64 sided polygon on each radius and connected the angles with line segments then I could rotate and move the inner polygon around until I got my tread correct (about 9.5-10"

16" from the inside handrail), and the all the lines representing the stairs would "string". The customer had a steel fabrication plant, and was going to have his people build it. A couple of engineers from the plant came out to the site to find out how I had designed it. (I had printed it out at 1/4" = 1'-0" and overlayed it on the customers plans, they loved it). The engineers went back and couldn't duplicate it on Autocad. They came back out and asked if I had it on a disk. I brought it in on a disk and they had to find an old computer to read the disk, and then they couldn't get it to load on Autocad. They asked me what version of Autocad I had and I told them generic cad II. They laughed at me. They stopped laughing when the owner gave me a brand new computer with 386 chip, digitizer, and a liscenced copy of autocad 9 with the architectural package (essentially version 10). He said "go home and redesign it on autocad and keep the computer". I did. At that time that was about $3,000. The transition to autocad wasn't hard, but I had to basically redraw my design from wrote, because autocad didn't have the features I used on Generic cadd to do the design. As an aside, The stairs I designed was in the livingroom going to the balcony. The engineers from the plant wanted to design the radius stairs going down to the basement. They didn't realize that any part of the tread which is overlapped by another tread doesn't count as tread width. Some of the treads going down had effective widths of under 5". Bust your ass stairs. Paul

Try here it's a free download

When you go to their site, go to the bottom of the page to "products and services" Then scroll down to "free downloads" Then go to "pro/desktop express" Next click on "Learn and Try' You can download from there.

Good luck, Bill

...

"Pro/DESKTOP Express Has Been Discontinued", specifically "Only the free Pro/DESKTOP Express promotional version of the Pro/DESKTOP product suite has been discontinued". IOW, you have to buy it now. As of 12/31/03.

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 17:54:56 -0800, "Gears" brought forth from the murky depths:

"Good luck" is right. They discontinued it in Dec 03. I tried to use mine yesterday and found it missing the key. When I checked PTC for it, I found the "discontinued" story. (Hmmm, why the 'ell is it still being listed on their site? Fidiots.)

I've never used Autosketch although, at the time, I did read the blurbs on it. IIRC, it's been a looooong time, Autosketch didn't have nearly the jam the GC had. I got the latest and, unfortunately, last update to GC namely 6.11.

Ted

I have their last one, GC 6.11, and am still using it.

It was great.

I agree. I run it under OS/2 W4 but it will run under W95 and W98. Don't know about the later Windoze versions.

Ted