8 Best Free Computer Aided Design(CAD) Software

CAD is the abbreviation used for the word computer aided design and is also known with another name Computer Aided Design and Drafting. This helps in assisting the computer systems in creating, designing or modifying and even analysis and optimization of a particular design.

With the help of computer aided design you can very easily create technical drawings using a particular computer software and this is what immensely helps to improve and enhance the creative skills and mind of a designer even further and not only is the productivity of a designer is increased but also the quality of that particular design can be enhanced to a great extend and with immense efficiency and it also improves the quality of communication and that happens through documentation.

Therefore CAD is such a combination that allows the engineers, architects or other designers to create not only 2 but also 3 dimensional models of various types of physical objects. This can also be used to inculcate various types of curves or different designs in the designers creations and enhance its looks and beauty. These are categorized in different forms such as Some CAD software’s mainly focus on the architectural designs only whereas others may be well suited for engineers. There are some software that are even absolutely free.

1) BRL – CAD

BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform Open Source combinatorial Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system that includes interactive 3D solid geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path-tracing and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface, and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and analysis.

2) Mono Works Project

The MonoWorks Project is an Open Source Computer-Aided Drafting and Engineering suite. It consists of libraries and applications meant to provide first class tools to engineers, hobbiests, and developers.

3) Free CAD

FreeCAD is multi-platform. It runs and behaves exactly the same way on Windows Linux and Mac OSX platforms. FreeCAD is a full GUI application. FreeCAD has a complete Graphical User Interface based on the famous Qt framework, with a 3D viewer based on Open Inventor, allowing fast rendering of 3D scenes and a very accessible scene graph representation.

4) Meshlab

MeshLab is an open source, portable, and extensible system for the processing and editing of unstructured 3D triangular meshes.
The system is aimed to help the processing of the typical not-so-small unstructured models arising in 3D scanning, providing a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering and converting this kind of meshes.

5) Misfit Model 3D

Misfit Model 3D is an OpenGL-based 3D model editor. It supports multi-level undo,skeletal animations, texturing mapping, scripting, command-line batch processing,and a plugin system for adding new features. Complete online help is included.

6) Open Cascade

Open CASCADE Technology is a software development platform freely available in open source. It includes C++ components for 3D surface and solid modeling, visualization, data exchange and rapid application development. Open CASCADE Technology can be best applied in development of specialized CAD/CAM/CAE applications.

7) Salome Platform

SALOME is an open-source software that provides a generic platform for Pre- and Post-Processing for numerical simulation. It is based on an open and flexible architecture made of reusable components.