Free CAD software most similar to AutoCAD?

Discussion in 'Software' started by Cruising Happiness, Oct 9, 2020.

  1. Cruising Happiness
    Joined: Jan 2020
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    Location: Florida

    Cruising Happiness Junior Member

    I learned AutoCAD years ago in school.

    Is there any free CAD software that is similar to what AutoCAD offered 10-15 years ago?
     
  2. jehardiman
    Joined: Aug 2004
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    jehardiman Senior Member

    Fusion 360, though it is more similar to Solid Works than AutoCAD. I had to draw naval architecture drawings with AutoCAD 2 to 2000 for about 20 years, really, RHINO is much better for 3D full shapes.
     
  3. Ad Hoc
    Joined: Oct 2008
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    Ad Hoc Naval Architect

  4. Tiny Turnip
    Joined: Mar 2008
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    Location: Huddersfield, UK

    Tiny Turnip Senior Member

    GNA CAD is free and pretty close to AutoCAD.
     
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  5. skyl4rk
    Joined: Aug 2006
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    Location: Lake Michigan

    skyl4rk Junior Member

    Librecad is very good.
     
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  6. Alexanov
    Joined: Feb 2003
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    Location: Norway Sola

    Alexanov Senior Member

  7. Cruising Happiness
    Joined: Jan 2020
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    Location: Florida

    Cruising Happiness Junior Member

    Thank you!

    I didn't reply before now since I spent the whole weekend in Fusion 360!
     
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  8. Cruising Happiness
    Joined: Jan 2020
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    Location: Florida

    Cruising Happiness Junior Member

    After an hour or two, it started to work well for me, and now I'm hooked!

    Took the first day to learn to use assemblies instead of layers, and small details:
    paste new instead of paste or changes to the copied assembly changed the original! Oops.
    Oh and always check "new body", join, or cut. Keep getting caught by that one.

    After an hour or two, I started getting somewhere faster and I really enjoyed my weekend.

    Also...

    It works for up to 2 weeks offline
    (worked fine when my internet connection went offline yesterday. I avoided any cloud software because my internet connection isn't always always on. Fusion 360 let me kept working until the internet connection came back online.)

    It says users can renew the one year free personal subscription annually too.
    (want to be sure I can do other things for months or a year and then come back to my idea models in the future!)

    Thanks for the pointer to 360!!
     
  9. Cruising Happiness
    Joined: Jan 2020
    Posts: 20
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    Location: Florida

    Cruising Happiness Junior Member

    Thanks! Fusion 360 is working great for basic 3D I want to do.

    I'm not sure if I can use its sketch function for 2D drawings to keep it in one program.

    Librecad looks more familiar for 2D. I also found "nanocad" when reading about Librecad.
     
  10. Andy
    Joined: Aug 2003
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    Location: Edinburgh

    Andy Senior Member

    FreeCAD is a good substitute and is developing rapidly just now - there are some interesting surfacing tools emerging and also surface expansion (see the FreeCAD forums for details of these projects)
     
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  11. pafurijaz
    Joined: Dec 2016
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    Location: Jamestown, Saint Helena

    pafurijaz Senior Member

    Nano CAD his a very close to AutoCAD also has a good geometric Kernel and is cheap, and woks offline, LibreCAD is stuck but for a very good 2D drafthing tool and very cheap I suggest QCAD, for 3D I also suggest you Moi3D an awesome cheap nurbs modeller.
     
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  12. navalex
    Joined: Feb 2010
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    Location: Madrid, Spain

    navalex Junior Member

    I have been using NanoCad for several years and I´m very happy with it.
    You can download the NanoCad 5.0 version completely free.
    The limitations for this free version is that you can´t create dynamic blocks and tool palettes.
    But for the rest you can create Xrefs and blocks with attribute definition texts, so I think it has more than enough for good quality working.
     
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