DraftSight Through The Ages

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Since it launched, DraftSight has continually added new features with each release.  In today’s blog, I’ll just mention a few of my favorites!

When I got my hands on the first Beta of DraftSight back in 2009 it was already a relatively stable, feature rich 2D CAD package and, as I said in a previous blog, allowed me to set up on my own and offer CAD Services in the middle of a recession.

With that Beta and the subsequent first release, I could open my old CAD files and edit them, as well as send Architects and Engineers files in a familiar format which I could reuse with my huge block library.  I didn’t have to recreate a thing.  Years of work developing standards and symbols took only minutes to transfer to DraftSight.  Also, given the fact that the interface was very similar to what I was used to, it was very easy to get started.

Obviously it wasn’t all plain sailing, I had issues creating PDFs and it took me quite a while to get my printing to a level I was happy with.

One feature that I did miss from DraftSight was LISP Support.  Over the years, I had built up a large Lisp Library. I’d even managed to create some routines myself to do some repetitive tasks.  So, when Lisp support was added in 2011, DraftSight was able to do everything I needed from a CAD package. I might add, it was substantially cheaper!

Over the following years we got additional new features like Image Tracer, Draw Compare, DGN Support and updated support for DWG files.  But with DraftSight 2019, there was a big change.  DraftSight 2019 Premium allowed users to create and edit 3D Entities.  This was a massive game changer.  3D Design was now a reality with DraftSight.

DraftSight 2020 has also added some great new features. My favorite being support for Dynamic Blocks.  I wonder what the next version of DraftSight will bring!

In my next blog, I’ll talk about some of the tips and tricks I’ve used with DraftSight over the years, so stay tuned!

This month, take 10 percent off DraftSight Professional and Premium!

Learn more about DraftSight here.

 

MJ Smyth

MJ Smyth

The first time I used CAD, it was on a DOS PC with an 8088 processor, 640K of memory and a Hercules Mono Graphics Card... That, well that was a long long time ago. I switched to DraftSight the day it was released and haven't looked back!
MJ Smyth

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