Hi, I just downloaded a program called Darftsight and I'm playing with it.

Download link http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/download-draftsight/.

It's kind of Autocad like, and saves in DWG format. I haven't found any gotchas yet. It doesn't seem to "phone home".

I'm putting together a page of links to useful free software for my business blog. I'll probably link Blender and Inkscape also.

If you try it, a little feedback on this thread might help others.

As usual, I had a great time geeking out with all you Mad Scientists last night!

-Jim Hart

Thanks for the tip, Boltz! Glad you were able to geek out with us yesterday!

was able to put this to use today, thanks for the tip.

Nice looking drawing! Can you tell us anything about the project?

Do you have Autocad experience, or are you starting from square one?

I have no experience with Autocad and a lot with Solidworks, so there is quite a bit that baffles me about Draftsight. Nonetheless, it outputs DXF's that I can cut on my router. I'm hoping people can use it to draw up stuff for me to make.

-Jim Hart

I spent a bit of time going over the basics using auto cad on it's 30 day license but that is set to expire soon, tomorrow I think. http://www.we-r-here.com/cad/tutorials/index.htm is what I used.

This program seems to be exactly what I was asking for, not sure if there are other alternatives out there but so far this seems to be exactly what I need.

I would like to have a cad system with all the bells and whistles but I don't think my company is going to purchase autocad for me as we already have 3 cad techs.

This is a picture of a junction box for a 34.5kV Junction box as part of a collection system for a wind farm, I work for a wind energy company, it's for a paper I am working on.

34.5KV! Wow!

I forgot to mention Draftsight is also available for OS X and linux.

I haven't tried it yet, but theoretically you you could output a DXF from Draftsight, bounce it into Inkscape, and create g-code from the Inkscape plugin. That way you could prepare your design with the real drafting tools Inkscape lacks, like associative dimensioning and snappable tangents.

-Jim Hart