What is the best CAD program that is affordable?

Question

Also, what is your opinion of AutoCAD?

Answer 1

AutoCad is the Mercedes of CAD



AutoCad LT is like the Toyota version of AutoCad - available for like $800 compared to thousands for AutoCad.



There is TurboCad which costs less than $100.



Finally, there is Freebyte

http://www.freebyte.com/cad/cad.htm



CATIA and ProEngineer are expensive as **** and not for the average user.

Answer 2

I bought Mechanical Desktop 2000 (AutoCAD) for about $3000, I later bought Mechanical Desktop 2005 for about $5000. This year I switched over to SolidWorks which I bought for about $5500 because my customers requested it and AutoCAD was forcing everyone to start using its new "Inventor" software. Anyhow, SolidWorks seems to be the CAD of choice right now for machine design.



AutoCAD was king of affordable CAD for a long time, but they developed a bad attitude (in my opinion). Back in 2000, when AutoCAD was essentially the only game in town, I would design using the full blown CAD software and send my drawings to my customers. My customers in turn had to have at least AutoCAD Light 2000 to be able to look at and print the drawings. As AutoCAD kept evolving, my customers did not want to invest in CAD software, so they kept the AutoCAD Light 2000 and I would have to convert my drawings to the earlier version so that they could look at them. This became harder and harder to do. By 2005, I had to save drawings in a dxf format in order for my customers to read them. Finally, in 2006, AutoCAD switched over completely to their Inventor series. With that update, my customers could not read the drawings and I could not work with my previous designs. There is a way to convert them, but ... its a long story. It screwed me up royally. In the mean time my customers were receiving drawings from my competitors who were using SolidWorks. They could receive the designs in a format called an e-Drawing. My customers did not have to purchase any software, and they could review the designs in stunning 3-D solids format with the ability to take measurements, section the assemblies and mark up the prints. They loved it! I was asked to switch over too, and I am starting to enjoy SolidWorks as well.

Answer 3

IntelliCad is affordable and works similar to AutoCad. It can also run LISP programs, (some may have to be tweaked or edited), It also takes-up less memory than Acad Lite. At work, I use AutoCad, but at home, I use IntelliCad.

Answer 4

Catia. Its a good programa nd beats any CAD program out there. A little difficult to learn but once you know it.................you can get very good paying jobs any where in the world in almost all big firms. Smart people learn Catia, stupid ones learn Auto CAD................

Answer 5

I have been using TurboCad for over 10 years, for the price you can't get a more powerful program.