Bill George
11-05-2015, 4:25 PM
I am now trying to get my MacBook Pro set up and was looking for a decent, not very expensive CAD program. I have been using Autodesk products since 1992 and I really don't like learning a complete new interface, sorry FreeCAD. The Mac choices are pretty limited and I don't know if Autodesk even makes AutoCAD for it anymore?
After much searching and trying out I settled on Quick CAD or QCAD. They are based in Europe and payment is in EUR's and its 33 for the download. I paid with PayPal and it converted over to about $38 USD. It comes in Mac, PC and Linux flavors. It runs on Windows 10 so they say.
They have a trial or community version that has all the features of the paid for version.... for 15 minutes and then you need to restart. You can elect to use the community version without restarting but it is limited in a lot of features.
I like QCAD It took in old ACAD files I had from 1994 just fine, and the newer ones from AutoCAD LT 2008 loaded ok. Its very close to LT or AutoCAD in use. The Snap is different, it only snaps to Grid or other objects, but with AutoCAD you can have the Grid at say 20 mm and the Snap at 2 mm. I work around that with QCAD by setting the Grid at 1 mm and making the color black so it does not show. The meta grid you can set at a light color you can see set at a either 10 or 20 mm.
Fusion 360 takes either the DXF or DWG files it makes. I did not try Importing into Coral Draw and that's my next test.
After much searching and trying out I settled on Quick CAD or QCAD. They are based in Europe and payment is in EUR's and its 33 for the download. I paid with PayPal and it converted over to about $38 USD. It comes in Mac, PC and Linux flavors. It runs on Windows 10 so they say.
They have a trial or community version that has all the features of the paid for version.... for 15 minutes and then you need to restart. You can elect to use the community version without restarting but it is limited in a lot of features.
I like QCAD It took in old ACAD files I had from 1994 just fine, and the newer ones from AutoCAD LT 2008 loaded ok. Its very close to LT or AutoCAD in use. The Snap is different, it only snaps to Grid or other objects, but with AutoCAD you can have the Grid at say 20 mm and the Snap at 2 mm. I work around that with QCAD by setting the Grid at 1 mm and making the color black so it does not show. The meta grid you can set at a light color you can see set at a either 10 or 20 mm.
Fusion 360 takes either the DXF or DWG files it makes. I did not try Importing into Coral Draw and that's my next test.