Disclaimer
Your author does not work for Dassault Systemes - but I really wish I did !
Draftsight - Freeware CAD from an actual planemaker
Hello everyone, I am writing this article for Flitetest, as in a quick search of the fantastic article database, I see that - so far at least ! - no one has written an article about Draftsight, an excellent piece of CAD software put out by Dassault Systemes in France. It is a wonderful piece of software, aimed at the hobbyist, but also at the small enterprise wanting CAD drafting software at a fraction of the price of more expensive packages.
CAD is more an more an integral part of how we model plane makers make our aeroplanes. What would half a lifetime ago have been considered a total fantasy is now an everyday occurrence - the use of CAD to design a hobbyist model aeroplane ! Even when I was a child in the 1980's, CAD was the sole preserve of big companies, and used in the commercial design of engineering and architecture alone.
As computers have become cheaper and cheaper, as well as becoming more and more powerful, so their abilities have become truly breathtaking when reviewing the progress of the last few decades. Today, a Intel Core2 Duo CPU'd home computer literally has as much power as the most expensive supercomputer built 20 years ago.
As a result of this, and the advent of the internet, increasing sophistication has seen a flood of once very expensive tools become commonplace and free to use.
With the internet, and the growth of the Free Software movement which includes Linux, there is a growing library of excellent free software for almost any purpose to be had - whether it be musical composition (MuseScore), graphic design (Inkscape), photo editing (the GiMP), or anything inbetween.
Most of the great free software titles out there are the work of dedicated enthusiasts, who hone their craft and skill and apply it to their passion. They appreciate hearing from the users making use of their software, and appreciate donations of all sorts, whether it be praise, or financial (though they do not expect it - its as you can, never demanded).
However - and how wonderful ! - there are many companies producing fine software that is meant to help foster talent in design and engineering, and have therefore created free software in their fields of expertise to encourage the flowering of talent.
One of these is Dassault Systemes, the computer software division of Dassault Aviation. Already this should excite everyone reading this article - because Dassault has been making mostly jet fighters, as well as high speed business jets since 1945. Some of their great designs include :
Dassault Rafale
A Mach 2+ 4th generation canard fighter, capable of flying from an aircraft carrier as well as from a land base.
Dassault Mirage F-1
A fast powerful Mach 2 jet fighter of the 1970's - and a personal favourite, as I have actually sat in the cockpit of one (very uncomfortable ! the seat cushions are the parachutes, did you know that ? I did not....ouch!)
Dassault Falcon 7X
A modern high speed intercontinental business jet, able to fly 12 people in great style and speed across both the Atlantic and Pacific, or from Europe to South Africa direct.
What is Draftsight ?
Draftsight is a CAD package that you can download for Free ! (you can find it here - https://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/ )
What can it do ?
I hesitate to say everything because that is not true. The primary limitation of Draftsight is that it is a predominantly 2D CAD, allowing designers to create view drawings of a design - such as the engineering view of the part assembly in the screenshot below :
As you can seem the drawing contains the components and tools necessary to make a fine design :
- Absolute and relative co-ordinates
- All line types and curves, as well as polygons, circles, ellipses, and bezier curves/splines
- Grids, Snaps (to geometric positions), Polar and Ortho drawing modes.
- Hatching and colour-filling
- Text and Labelling
- Modification tools
- Dimensions and Leaders
- Areas to Regions, for engineering design estimations
- Model View (for the design) and Sheet view for plotting to paper or a PDF file
- Mathematical design tools
- An ocean of training videos and tutorials to learn at your own pace !
Designing 3D structures like wings and fuselages will definitely take practice, but can be done if willing to take up the challenge.
Uses
Draftsight is excellent for designing :
- Foamboard Aeroplanes and Parts
- Balsa Aeroplane parts in conjuction with XFoil (another free model aeroplane CAD)
- Parts for Multicopters
- Parts and designs for helicopters
- FPV parts and components
- Whimsical items like parachute dropping gear.
Draftsight is also great for testing ideas for models before actually building - for instance, whether that Quad-Nutball can actually fit everything inside the swap-pod !
Conclusion
I recommend Draftsight to the entire Flitetest community as a great tool to include in your computer swiss-army knife.
Its a very cool thing - free, powerful CAD from a company whose main line of business is actual jet fighters !
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Yes, I too love DraftSight for that very reason, its a wonderful tool able to provide every last possible drafting tool needed for good CAD Design, at no cost at all for the enthusiast - and if you opted for the Professional version, it is very affordable. The paradigm of AutoCAD shared is excellent, I totally agree - a text book for AutoCAD is almost fully transferrable for Draftsight, and I agree its an excellent thing. Thanks for the feedback, I am glad to see its giving as much joy as I get from it.
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With regard to tutorials, the answer is both yes and no - Many of the contributors on Flitetest have often included their design principles in their design articles, which helps to understand how other designers implement their concepts.
The many excellent videos online for Draftsight training are incredibly useful too - they help in setting the workspace up for use, introduce the concept of Layers (for both visual appearance and finished output), and - most important for us aeroplane designers - the setup of the output sheets, so that the printed / output PDF is exactly at the right size - so that a millimeter is really a millimeter printed, and that an inch is really an inch.
While I am the first to agree that drawing a house really isn't very me - or you - knowing how to use the tool is a great skill, and is very rewarding. The great result is that with this phenomenally powerful tool, we are able to make incredibly sophisticated models.
A great example is Andres' fantastic X-29 - I am sincerely hoping the plan is published soon, because I want to build one as a slope soarer ! It was designed in a CAD much like Draftsight, and looks incredible as a result.
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Yes - and no. There is no native output in direct G-Code, but there are some intermediates. These are : the DXF, which is a pure mathematical, human readable, vector instruction file. These, in my experience, can be easily converted to G-Code, using freeware file converters.
A better file format natively exported is the Stereolithography file format, aka .STL . Many CNC Machines today (e.g. 3D Printers and Routers) are able to natively read STL files, and treat the origin as the same location as their own origin, and import into modern tool's software controllers is usually very painless.
Your question is a really pertinent one, and I had a quick check in my copy of DraftSight 2017 x64 edition to make sure I could provide you with the most correct answer.
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There is a recent patch out from Dassault Systemes released in August this year which can help in that.
As Flihghy says below, its also good to check to see if there are any security programs being over-zealous, as this can give rise to trouble.
If you have a recentish Mac, running on an Intel processor, it might be worth considering dual-booting with Windows 7 perhaps. Another good dual-boot option is Linux (I like Ubuntu best personally, its really slick and easy to use, huge support), for which a really stable edition of Draftsight is readily available.
You might like Ubuntu so much you use it more than Windows - I sure do for work !
Let us know how you get on :-)
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I have found that downloading the latest patch from Dassault Systemes deals with problem fine. I am running DS in Win10 64-bit without trouble at the moment, after doing exactly that.
the fault you have described was patched in August this year, so I do encourage you to try that.
Another good fix is to run DS in Win7 compatibility mode, as that works too.
Let us know how you get on :-)
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