FreeDraft

The first and most important thing that you need to know about FreeDraft is that it is a 2D CAD application that provides support for DWG and DXF files. If you’re familiar with CAD applications, then by all means go and give FreeDraft a try. If you’re not familiar with CAD applications, then you need to know that you’ll be hard pressed to find any help, mainly because there’s no Help file and also because the official FreeDraft website is in German. FreeDraft’s interface is in German also, but you can easily change it to English.

FreeDraft is portable software and that means it doesn’t need to be installed. To get started with this CAD application you have to download an archive, extract its contents, and run the FreeDraft executable. Once you do, FreeDraft will launch and you’ll get to see its interface, which is set to German by default. To switch to English go to Werkzeuge -> Sprache –> and select English. The menus will switch to English without having to restart the application.

From a visual point of view, FreeDraft is precisely what you would expect from an application of this type: a main panel that presents the CAD drawing you’re working on, a toolbar at the top with buttons for various features and functions, another toolbar on the left hand side with even more buttons for various features and functions. Overall, a simple enough layout that you’ll easily figure out.

Figuring out what FreeDraft doe son the other hand, will take a bit more time. There’s no Help file to turn to, the official FreeDraft website is in German, and the videos that are presented on the official FreeDraft website are in German as well. If you’re familiar with CAD applications, these shouldn't prove to be an issue though. And if you’re not familiar with CAD application, at least FreeDraft is free software and you have all the time in the world to explore it and uncover what it can do.

FreeDraft is a free and portable 2D CAD application that you can use on your Windows PC to work with DWG and DXF files.