easy to use and free 2d CAD program, does one exist?!

[JMS1972]

My main issue with Inkscape is that it doesn't seem to like round numbers for anything - I'll create a circle with an origin at, say, 100mm up and 100mm along, 10mm radius, and it'll suddenly become 99.997 and 100.042 or something like that. It doesn't make any practical difference for what I'm doing, but it's still annoying. But I've used it for a few things, mainly to be able to draw repair panel shapes that I can then print out and use as templates, and when they get damaged, just print another copy. I've also recently used it with a local firm's CNC plasma cutter to have some items cut.

I think that small difference is the width of the line. I've seen something similar. As I set the line width to equal the Lasers "kerf "...

 

[creepy]

Used to use Draftsight but it is no longer free so moved to QCAD which has done all I need so far, but I have not needed anything complex.

 

[daedalusminos]

Might be worth checking out the open source LibreCAD, I haven't used it for ages but it used to be CAM orientated.

 

[julianthegypsy]

Might be worth checking out the open source LibreCAD, I haven't used it for ages but it used to be CAM orientated.

I might have a look at that too.

 

[James1979]

If it’s like libre office it’ll be good. Thanks for that. I’ll look tonight

 

[Agroshield]

If it’s like libre office, it’ll be good.

I do not think there is any connection, only a coincidence of the name.

It may or may not be important to people, but not many of the free CAD programs support DWG. QCAD, as mentioned above, is one of them that does, and has a cheap upgrade path to the professional version.

Someone asked above about DXF and units. DXF is a unitless format. It is up to the program opening the DXF file to decide what '1' means in the file.

 

[Morris]

I know nothing about CAD programs but I have Librecad and have used it for laser cut parts (cut by a local company) and it seems ok to me (self taught using the manual).