Free CAD from an actual aeroplane company !

by Deepshark5 | February 21, 2017 | (6) Posted in Reviews

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 !
What is great about Draftisght is that the model-space design is in-scale. What this means is that when drawing a wing component with a length of 50mm, that it has an absolute mathematical size of the part in the design model.
 
When the print is produced in the sheet space, then its size is precise on the paper, when the view scale is set to 1:1 - this is awesome for designers, as it means that the size designed is the size output.
 
Its possible to also produce full-sized PDF documents, with all the information about the design, annotations, instructions, and information for building your design.
 
3D Work
 
Draftsight, in its early editions was very strictly 2D. However, with time, 3D features are making their way into the program, and creative designers are producing creative structures, such as in the drawing below.

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 !

COMMENTS

Kilo Kilo on August 17, 2017
I use DraftSight almost daily at work and I design all of my foamboard planes with it, it's a great program. One of the best things is that you can find examples for almost every tool by searching for "How do I do [x] in DraftSight?" or "How do I do [x] in AutoCAD?" Many of the tools use the same commands as AutoCAD, so anyone who's used that will be able to pick up DraftSight quickly.
Log In to reply
Deepshark5 on August 18, 2017
Hi Kilo Kilo,
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.
Log In to reply
spetnazer on August 17, 2017
This is very interesting. I will try it. Thank you for the review. Is there a video tutorial about "how to make airplane or How to make jet fighter or etc. couse in try to search in youtube mostly about architecture?

Log In to reply
Deepshark5 on August 18, 2017
Hi Spetnazer,

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.
Log In to reply
blackkrystal73 on August 17, 2017
does it have a cam function to generate G-Code for tool paths?
Log In to reply
Deepshark5 on August 18, 2017
Hi Blackkrystal73,

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.
Log In to reply
flihghy on September 8, 2017
Try disabling your security program. On Windows 7 Norton would not let me activate.
Log In to reply
mikeporterinmd on September 6, 2017
None functional on macos 10.12.6. Asks to activate then quits. Each time it starts, repeat.
Log In to reply
Deepshark5 on September 28, 2017
Hi there Mike Porter in Maryland,

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 :-)
Log In to reply
rick_harriss on August 24, 2017
Mine seems to be faulty it keeps asking me to activate it - I have - but the message repeats. Any one else?

Log In to reply
rick_harriss on August 24, 2017
Won't run under windows 10 Big shame that.
Log In to reply
Deepshark5 on September 28, 2017
Hello Rick,

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 :-)
Log In to reply
Das_Sams on May 12, 2020
Now you've to pay for it. even if you downloaded yours before. Also the Linux version was dropped. You can use Teighaconverter or an online converter to convert your DWG files to DXF and use LibreCAD which is GPL an thus something like this will not happen again to you. LibreCAD runs on Linux, OS X, Windows (QT needed) and I'm quite sure you can build it on BSD and other Unixes.
Log In to reply

You need to log-in to comment on articles.


Free CAD from an actual aeroplane company !