cad software

[omga14]

Just wondering what anybody knows about cad design software or if someone can direct me to a site that gives a breakdown. I want something that I can let my wife use to design a dream home or I can input information and come up with what kind of compresion ratio I should use in my engine with the given components already in the engine. Or even design a complete engine. Any help is usefull. My next computer which will be my first ground up build is specifically for this type of thing. With some gaming on the side of course. Thanks ahead of time.

[Iceman]

autocad 2002 is the daddy at the moment. if you want it without 3d suport there is a lite version available. there is also a program called pro engeneer which is way too expensive (£30,000ish). AutoCAD 2002 costs around £4000 and the lite version costs around £600-800

[CHE]

All those titles cost about half as much in the US. You can get LT for about $650 and the full version of AutoCAD for less than $2000. Shop around in your surrounding areas. You'd be really surprised in the pricing difference from one regional rep to another.

Like he said, LT does 2D only. Also, I have suspected that it supports less filetypes and pluggins, and it seems less stable with large drawing files. I personally think my observations are not coincidence but I have no proof.

Now, there are applications which are specific to the two tasks you mentioned. There are CAD knock-off programs that retail for under $100 and claim to do a very good job at building construction and interior design and even competing with AutoCAD as a drafting platform. I don't know if it's true and I don't remember the names. Similarly, there are drawing packages for dynamic mechanical design but they cost more.



Hey, I just had an idea. Comb the AutoDesk website. I haven't been there in about two years, but I know they've always given away 30 day trial CDROMs. That might be the way to go if you can get something. By Day 30 you should know how to use it LOL