2D CAD for lines, circles, boxes and text

[Circlotron]

As the title suggests, I am looking for a dead simple CAD package that will do the above for the purpose of drawing simple wiring diagrams on a 1mm grid. I really don't need a full blown package with a zillion options for every single permutation and combination of line style and layer and dimension and whatever else I don't need. I just wanna draw kindergarten level stuff  Preferably save to .dxf or .dwg and free. Microsoft paint is not suitable. Any suggestions?

[ampdoctor]

give deltacad a look. very inexpensive and there's not much to it so it might fit the bill for what you want. they also have a fully functioning demo with something like a 30 day time limit. it used to be that you could keep reinstalling the demo for another 30 days, but they may have fixed that in the newest releases. lol

http://www.deltacad.com/index.html

[0xdeadbeef]

QCad is by far the best I found for my purposes.
For me it kinda the DIPTrace for 2D CAD.

[ampdoctor]

QCad is by far the best I found for my purposes.
For me it kinda the DIPTrace for 2D CAD.

I could be mistaken but it seems like he's looking for something a step or two above paint, which is where deltacad sits, while QCad is actually more like real cad software. No matter what I'm a bit curious to see what other people come up with here as well.

[Circlotron]

I have been using Qcad for about two years but had to resume using Windows 7 instead of Linux at work. The Windows version of Qcad has no way of printing an existing A3 size drawing on a single A4 sheet the way the Linux version can.

DeltaCAD looks pretty good for my needs. I'll give it a try. Hope it will load existing drawings; dxf standardisation seems to be a bit of a muddle from one package to the next.

Thanks guys. Further suggestions welcome of course.

[Circlotron]

Okay, playing around with DeltaCAD at home right now. Works pretty good on Wine 1.7.30 btw.
I loaded up an old A3 drawing and it prints to an A4 sheet just fine  The lines are a bit thin though. I can Select All but if I try to then edit the properties of everything that is selected it drops out of that mode. I can't change the thickness of all the lines to one uniform size in one hit. Should I be able to do this?

[ampdoctor]

Okay, playing around with DeltaCAD at home right now. Works pretty good on Wine 1.7.30 btw.
I loaded up an old A3 drawing and it prints to an A4 sheet just fine  The lines are a bit thin though. I can Select All but if I try to then edit the properties of everything that is selected it drops out of that mode. I can't change the thickness of all the lines to one uniform size in one hit. Should I be able to do this?

Yeah you should be able to select all then go to the tool bar and on the far right drop down select the line weight you want and it should change everything in one go. you should also be able to select multiple line segments with ctrl- left click and change those you selected in one go as well. the whole program is ridiculously simple so don't try to over-think it.

[Vasi]

QCAD community edition is now LibreCAD.

LibreCAD started as a project to build CAM capabilities into the community version of QCad for use with a Mechmate CNC router.

Since QCad CE was built around the outdated Qt3 library, it had to be ported to Qt4 before additional enhancements. This gave rise to CADuntu.

The project was known as CADuntu only for a couple of months before the community decided that the name was inappropriate. After some discussion within the community and research on existing names, CADuntu was renamed to LibreCAD.

Porting the rendering engine to Qt4 proved to be a large task, so LibreCAD initially still depended on the Qt3 support library. The Qt4 porting was completed eventually during the development of 2.0.0 series, thanks to our master developer Rallaz, and LibreCAD has become Qt3 free except in the 1.0.0 series.

[0xdeadbeef]

I tried both and QCad looks much more polished and advanced. Also the people in the QCad forum are very helpful.
Indeed I decided to buy the Pro version immediately since I wanted the SVG export but also to support development.

[nquantum]

check ViaCAD simple to use and quite cheap also can anytime upgrade to more advance

[codeboy2k]

DraftSight from Dassault Systemes is free for hobbyists and individuals.

It's a full featured 2D CAD and can read and write DXF/DWG formats.

http://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/offerings/

I doubt very much that you will find a CAD package that can read/write DXF/DWG and NOT have all the "zillion options for every single permutation and combination of line style and layer and dimension and whatever else [you] don't need." 

You can just ignore those.

[zapta]

Eagle and Inkscape worked for me for 2d drawing (for last cutters).

[Christopher]

DraftSight is pretty good for the pretty good price of free

[0xdeadbeef]

I tried both, the free versions of Solid Edge and DraftSight (and then some more), but they were cumbersome tools with gigantic installations which completely ignored normal windows and usability conventions.
I'm sure you can do everything you want there if you have the time to learn your way around, but if you just want to use a CAD tool now and then, I still think QCAD is the one that allows an easy start and is still quite powerful.

[codeboy2k]

I'll have to give QCAD a try too then.. Sometimes I too just want a quick drawing program that doesn't hinder my with unnecessary requirements ( to my task at hand)

[BloodyCactus]

draftsight is great, but its licensining is terrible. Dont know how it is on windows, but on Linux the provided free license would expire like every 3 months and often would not renew and no amount of jiggery pokery would get a new license, which would leave the app not working.

it was a real pain it would say 'invalid license' or 'expired license' when you open the app and have it close down immediately.

lots of activation problem threads if you google around.

[ion54]

As a Windows user I can vouch for DraftSight. I have tried QCad and the most annoying "feature", if you can call it that, is the print being a paid (premium) feature.
On top, as reported, it has a problem printing on A4/Letter when drawing was done on a larger size sheet.