drawing planning software

[ianfish]

what have others used to do their own sketches and line drawings?

 

I want to be able to do as much of the project plans myself as possible.

 

I am at a loss for ideas and cost as there seems to be a huge variance from a cad package  to the extreme of a free app on my mobile....

 

ideas please?!

 

Ian

[Conor]

Depends on what you want to do. If it's for just planning and visualisation, then any of the free online apps would do. If you are talking about actual design drawings for building control, engineering or construction.... Then that's a different ball game. Most professionals would use autocad or the architecture version of it. It's great, once you've spent a year or two learning how to use it!

[Jeremy Harris]

I used Autocad, as I have been using it for decades and had a copy.  I'd not recommend it for simple drawings, though, as it's expensive and the learning curve is very steep.  I believe that Sketch Up is fairly easy to use, and has been used by some.  It's probably overkill though, as all that's normally needed is a 2D drawing package.  There used to be a free version of TurboCad available, and having used that a bit many years ago it might be an option.  Not sure if Draftsight is still available free, but that's another package that I think some here have used in the past.

[Moonshine]

For the pre-app stage and visualisation of the site, i used Sketchup and QGIS.

[Ralph]

https://www.qcad.org/en/ is quite good and open source.

[Lift span]

I’m a big fan of architouch3d on the ipad:

 

http://www.architouch3d.com/

 

 

[ianfish]

From a dig around older freeware versions are no longer supported

 

The current version  is available for 30 day trial...

 

I did own a version of auto cad but sadly I got parted from my legal disc...this is about eight years ago though.

 

Ian

 

 

On 15/10/2019 at 16:45, JSHarris said:

  Not sure if Draftsight is still available free, but that's another package that I think some here have used in the past.

 

[ianfish]

1 hour ago, Lift span said:

I’m a big fan of architouch3d on the ipad:

 

http://www.architouch3d.com/

 

 

looks a good tool...im on a pc 

[Russdl]

Without a doubt, SketchUp.

 

For the lay 'person' it is (IMHO) the best way to visualise what your future house will be like, all in glorious 3D. It takes a while (well, it did for me) to get to grips with it, but when you get the hang of it's incredible. CAD is beyond me, I've tried and failed, but what CAD can't do (can it?), is show those intricate details, just beyond that 'section' drawing. The joints and the corners, where the roof and gable end meet the wall (or can it?). For me it was probably most useful in designing our recessed blinds, how that all comes together, up in the corners and with the cladding etc etc would have been mighty difficult/expensive without me spending numerous late nights knobbing around with SketchUp and realising where gaps would be and it just wouldn't have worked based on the limited information contained in a sectional drawing.

 

And it's free.

 

Edited October 16, 2019 by Russdl
the 'and it's free' bit.

[andyscotland]

SketchUp is brilliant if you actually need 3d visualisation of anything. 

 

But I find it very slow to use for anything more like 2D line / detail drawings. May just be that I'm more familiar with a traditional cad-style interface. I use QCad for anything like that.

[Russdl]

3 hours ago, andyscotland said:

But I find it very slow to use for anything more like 2D line / detail drawings.

 

I would agree.

 

For 2D drawings I still use SketchUp because I'm rubbish at CAD. From the SketchUp  'Camera' menu I use 'Standard Views' 'Top'  and 'Parallel Projection' and that gives pretty reasonable 2D results but nowhere near as good as a proper CAD package.