DraftSight Pros and Cons

It's FREE!! For most people in the 3D design world you need software that will edit .dwg files. DraftSight does this very well giving you that familiar feel of AutoCAD at the same time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The dimension styles and scales are always what's lacking in a 2D software. I think DraftSight is trying to mimic AutoCAD in this sense. But both programs can be frustrating in this regard. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Very easy to use, it is free, I don't need to buy Autocad to do my drafting work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's somewhat hard to navigate. Only good for 2D drawings for me, for more complex scenes I do with point clouds, I use 3D Studio Max instead. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that Draftsight provides the ability to open 2015 AutoCAD files to save down to earlier versions Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I am not a CAD user, I never have been, that said; the program does not seem very intuitive. Selection, grouping/ungrouping and adding additional information (all incredibly simple tasks) were not so simply accomplished. Again, I blame this on myself and assume that commands and functioning are more like AutoCAD however I cannot use this software for editing dwgs without further researching the how-to's Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are several things that I like about the DraftSight software. Among them, first and foremost is it's FREE. But not only is it free, it is actually a good 2D software program. It is fairly equal to the Lite version of AutoCAD. I like that it will edit all versions of DWG files and you don't have to pay for upgrades every year as conventional CAD software requires. Now granted if you need more functionality there is a Pro version for about $300.00 that provides more programing options, additional drawing tools and short-cut functions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The biggest problem I experienced was with "-" (Dashes) in an imbedded Excel table. They would sometimes disappear through various Zoom scales and be very elusive to select and delete. I guess the second most annoying issue was how to handle multi-sheet drawings within a single file and printing them. That may have been an issue carried over from AutoCAD though. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

You can view and edit 2D CAD drawings with the free software. I need to view/edit AutoCad files a few times a month but could not justify the cost of a AutoCad license. This does everything I need for free. Hard to beat for what I use it for. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When you use the free software, every time you open the program, you get a window with a huge "buy now" button and a very very small "no thank you" button. The no thank you button is so small it is almost hard to click on. So I always leave an empty window open so I don't have to click the small button every time I need to open a drawing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Draftsight is free, or cheap, depending on whether you get the free or professional versions.

Is close enough to being AutoCAD that skill with either is reasonably interchangeable. The basic drafting method- board drafting on a computer is the same.

Draftsight works the AutoCAD .dwg file format, as near to a universal engineering drawing format as you can get.

Draftsight has the essential functionality of AutoCAD, vector graphics, layers, blocks, associative dimensions and annotation.

Draftsight is available for download and has a small system footprint and is always there in a pinch.

There are command line aliases, so when you type 'REFEDIT' at the command line, you get REFEDIT, even though it's called something else in draftsight.

User support via google or the draftsight community is available, but not as universal as AutoCAD solutions on the internet. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's close enough that the differences are confusing and frustrating.

The pointer tends to lag and be otherwise not the same as AutoCAD. A small but annoying difference.

You can mess up drawings made with AutoCAD Mechanical, MEP or other specialized versions by reducing special annotations, bubbles, bills of material, weld symbols, etc. to simple vectors, which will display properly but can't be edited in the same way they were before. This is something to watch out for and can make revising those same annotations a pain, or more easily redone than troubled with. This is something to be aware of with .dwg files in general.

Draftsight does not have 3D solid modelling, but I haven't used that for years, no big loss for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

DraftSight has a "professional pack" offering --for professional grade CAD product use -- as well as a free 2D drafting download, with which I have had most of my DraftSight experience. While many other CAD softwares only run on a Windows platform, DraftSight works easily on a Mac. The content and interface of DraftSight is very user friendly, maintaining similar symbols, icons, and inputs as other standard CAD software; these similarities enable easy communication between various CAD softwares when individuals are sharing files. No new graphics drivers or hardware are necessary for DraftSight products. File sizes are not gargantuan and exchanges between other softwares is easy. The company focuses on efficiencies and using customer feedback to improve their product---new product releases occur with the professional line of the product as well as the free version. Via the "DraftSight Community", they maintain extensive "user's guides," "resource libraries" and "user communities" that include blogs, training videos and other tips for product usage. The online solutions are easily navigable and offer succinct answers to broad and specific questions. While DraftSight does update users with new product features and offerings, they do not suffocate you with sales campaigns or relentlessly pitch new upgrades for a large cost. I also like that DraftSight offers a free download of the user's manual that I can reference digitally whenever needed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While DraftSight offers "DraftSight Community" for all users, the next level of technical support is the Prosumer, which offers advanced configuration and telephone/email support.....at a cost of $100/month or $315/12 months, it seems like a lot of additional money to pay on top of paying for a professional version of the product. I have not used the professional version as extensively as the free version, but the free version often times closed down on me unexpectedly in the middle of my session. Luckily, my settings were on autosave, so progress was not often lost in a work period, but it did happen often enough that it would get annoying. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Draftsight's best quality is that it is entirely free. This gives people the opportunity to take the time and learn Computer aided design software that they normally wouldn't haven't had the chance to learn. Being a chemical engineer, we aren't taught how to use CAD-style software suites, and this is really unfortunate because it's an incredibly valuable skill to have, Case and point, my internship and Co-Op at Vi-Jon heavily relied on by ability to draw P&ID's of the process systems. This isn't a difficult task in any CAD-style program but when AutoCad is several hundred dollars for a licence it takes a relatively simple task and turns it into a nightmare.

The software itself is Great. If i'm honest it's not as good as AutoCad, but as a way to learn how to use the type of software. This is especially true as a professional, as AutoCad only offers free software to students.

One enormous benefit is DraftSights ability to open drawings done in AutoCad. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

DraftSight gets regular updates, but it still lacks the full functionality that AutoCad posses. As a simple computer aided design program for things like 2D parts and P&ID's it s just fine but beyond that things can get tricky and it sometimes make me say "forget it, i'll bring my work laptop home and use AutoCad". And that's the problem, it is free but you do in some ways get what you pay for. If the Dassault team spent a little more time developing the software with some of the features that make autocad so usable, it could be a deadly competitor in a lop-sided market.

But it's free, you loose nothing by trying it out and maybe learning a few things along the way. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The price-tag without sacrificing much functionality. The keyboard shortcuts, the layout, the tool set, and even the layer management is familiar enough that an AutoCAD user can transition with very little fanfare. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are only two that I know of, and for all that I know, there could be fixes for them.

1. The speed isn't quite the same as AutoCAD. This is very noticeable with larger files even when using the same desktop.

2. Plug-in support. I'll admit to not looking into this much, but I have a hard time believing that plugins written for AutoCAD can be natively used in DraftSight. I will have to look into this a bit more though. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ease of seeing all views of a part in the draft window is nice, and really illustrates features well. Similar to other 2Dimensional cad packages this is a great tool for landscape and simple drafting situations, but the moment complex 3Dimensional designs are needed the use becomes limited. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Difficulty in using or even finding some of the commands. The software can show multiple views of a particular part or assembly, but the interface can become confusing when the part is really complex or the assembly gets quite large. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.