Software for creating working drawings

[northernscout]

Hi everyone. Just putting this out there hoping someone may be able to help. I have been using Micrografx Windows Draw to create illustrations showing people how to build antennas and or other electronics. It has worked wonderfully well for me but it must be 20 years old now since it was last updated. It does not work in Windows 7 or 8 and in Windows 7 virtual XP mode it works very slowly if at all. MG Draw allowed me to make dimension lines and arrows and that sort of thing like a basic CAD program and I could very the line thickness and type.Does anyone know of a similar software for the Mac or PC that isn't highly out of reach in cost and is easy to understand and use? I think that I have looked at about everything on the market but products change and improve so I could have missed an important development.Hope to hear back.73VA7DH

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[N3BFO]

Hi everyone. Just putting this out there hoping someone may be able to help. I have been using Micrografx Windows Draw to create illustrations showing people how to build antennas and or other electronics. It has worked wonderfully well for me but it must be 20 years old now since it was last updated. It does not work in Windows 7 or 8 and in Windows 7 virtual XP mode it works very slowly if at all. MG Draw allowed me to make dimension lines and arrows and that sort of thing like a basic CAD program and I could very the line thickness and type.Does anyone know of a similar software for the Mac or PC that isn't highly out of reach in cost and is easy to understand and use? I think that I have looked at about everything on the market but products change and improve so I could have missed an important development.Hope to hear back.73VA7DH

VA7DHI am partial to open-sourced software. It is usually more robust and better supported than proprietary software. I use LibreOffice [LibreOffice.org] as my preferred Office Suite it includes an excellent drawing application. If you are looking for a more sophisticated capability try LibreCAD.73,N3BFO / Walt

[wb7sgl]

Wow, this is a really old topic at this point and I can't believe I hadn't seen it before.On Windows, it's hard to beat Visio, though it's not free.For the MAC, I love OmniGraffle, but it's not so affordable... I think a decent (though I haven't used it in a long time) alternative might be Dia http://dia-installer.de/ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dia_%28software%29)Someone reading this looking for something similar might find good software looking at a repository listing popular titles by category:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-source_software_packages#CADHappy New Year Everyone!73 de WB7SGL-Rob

[BePartial]

Have you considered GIMP? It's a free, open source software that I've been using for about 5 years. It's as good as Photoshop, but free and much more intuitive.Have you also considered SketchUp? Check it out on Google apps. You can do some amazing things there and the free version is quite good.

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