Drawing programs for IPad.

MPowers

Well-Known Member
For 30 years + until I retired, the companies i worked for always supplied the AutoCad I used. I have discovered that in retirement i still need to draw and do simple drafting but i really can’t afford AutoCad. Are there any inexpensive or free drawing programs out there that will run on an iPad or a MacBook? PS-I never worked with vector works . I’m open to any suggestions.
 
We use OmniGraffle, depending on the level of drawings you want/need to do, it may not be what you need, we use it for basic set/stage layouts...nothing fancy....wmmv

Sean...
 
Fusion360 should work on your Mac, and has a free tier for personal use. It's made by Autodesk so it should have that "semi-familiar-feel" to it. It does have a slight learning curve to it, but hey, learning new things is always a fun adventure! It's really popular in the 3D printing community for modeling.

I haven't done it myself, but I know there's a way to make your model and then slice it up to where you dimension everything. If you need to make build plans.
 
Fusion 360 does kind of lock one into their cloud storage ecosystem to some extent, or so I've heard. There are some definite limitations on how many projects you can have at once for the free version. I am not up on the specific details; however, it is something I would look at carefully before committing to using it.

FreeCAD is an open-source alternative that generally works but can be rather clunky at times and also has a definite learning curve. I've used the 3D parts of FreeCAD a tiny bit; I haven't tried it for specifically 2D stuff. I'm still very much on the uphill part of that learning curve.

For just plain drawing (as opposed to drafting or CAD), Inkscape might be worth a look.
 

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