CAD software is a must-have tool to have in most enterprises to reduce fatal flaws in design that may show up during production. If you’re in the industry that relies a lot on CAD tools, you probably already know that getting a good CAD software can be quite costly. And if you are a student who is just starting to dip your toes into CAD software, this will definitely be a problem. There is however a second option: free alternative CAD software. We have done the legwork and looked for the 10 CAD software that you can try for free now to design your next 2D drawing or 3D modeling project. Here are but just 10 of these software, and the links to download them for whichever operating system you are currently on.

Depending on your chosen CAD software, you can design and work with anything from architectural drawings—graduating onto BIM—to electrical drawings to mechanical schematics. While it can be easy enough to find CAD software for PC, however, it can get a bit difficult with the Mac OS. Vectorworks is a object oriented CAD software for Mac OS X. The software is specially used for 2D drafting, technical drawing and Powerful 3D modeling.

If you know of more, do share them with us in the comments section. Recommended Reading: 1. Sculptris is a professional yet free 3D modeling program that is made by one industry 3D expert, Pixologic. You can use it to easily design your own version of a troll, dragon, or even Godzilla itself through their rich sculpting toolset.

If you’re bad at playing around the geometry and polygons to create your own surface, worry not, because Sculptris surface contains countless of triangles that are automatically built into your 3D model surface. [Download:, ] 2. SketchUp Make One of the most popular 3D modeling software,, is used mostly for architectural purposes and sometimes for other niches in the 3D design market. If you’re looking for a complete 3D modeling software for your professional career with all the tools included, minus the price tag, then SketchUp is for you. Take a look at SketchUp for a lot of amazing content (created by SketchUp users) which you can download, and at the same time, see what the software is capable of.

[Download:, ] 3. DraftSight is a free 2D CAD editor that is good for professional CAD users, students and educator, especially if you need to create, edit and view your project in the native DWG file format. It comes with a nice set of features that allows you to generate professional looking plans using lines, polylines, dimensions, text and others. The interface is relatively dull, but this may appeal to those who prefer a minimalist and simple CAD software. [Download:,,,, ] 4.

FreeCAD This project is 100% open source and is aimed directly for mechanical engineering and product design uses, but also can be used for architecture or other engineering industry that relies a lot on parametric 3D modeler. Although it is open source and free, is on par with other popular CAD programs due to its capability in creating real 3D solids, support for meshes, 2D drafting, right hand coordinate system plus many more features. The program itself is extremely modular, where you can opt for very advanced extension and customization. [Download:,,, ] 5. OpenSCAD For those who want to work on the specifics, especially engineers, is your ideal 3D modeling platform. It does not have interactive modeling for you to design your model, but instead relies more on what you defined in the parameters through the script files.