Solved Free/affordable 2D CAD software

[Ryan O.]

As of now I have designed 3 foam board planes, but the plans are only on Poster Board. I know there are several subscription 2D CAD softwares like Adobe Illustrator, but those can accumulate in Price over time. There is a software I am looking at for making plans available on the internet. TurboCad, from what I can tell, is a one time purchase for much less than the annual price of Adobe Illustrator. I can't tell if it is a good design tool for plans. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[mach1 rc]

I use inkscape. It's super powerful and you can create plans.

 

[Flying Monkey fab]

Fusion 360 is free to hobbyists. It’s 3d but there is nothing keeping you from using it mostly or exclusively 2d.

 

[Ryan O.]

Thanks, I have both and will start tutorials for the 3d part soon.

 

[hotwax]

Hi Ryan,

for my drawings I use the freeware LibreCAD. It's AutoCAD compatible. You can find a good tutorial on Youtube.
If you want to make .pdf-files, you can use PDFcreator as printer. It's free too. For making .pdf-files for a DIN A4 printer, just use the poster print function of Adobe Reader and print with PDFcreator (Paper Size: custom 190 x 277 mm).

For examples, look here: https://forum.flitetest.com/index.php?threads/ftfc20-fb-trixter-beam-designed-by-hotwax.60000/

 

[ChrisTopher Arranz]

there's also FreeCAD if anyone is interested in that.

https://www.freecadweb.org/