Free Cad Drawing Software For Mac

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We already covered the ten free CAD software for every type of platform. Here is another ten best CAD software for Mac that will run natively on the Mac OS X operating system. It is fully compatible with the Mac operating system, and no need to use any specific emulation software or a compatibility layer to uses this software.

Ten best CAD software for Mac

1 Vectorworks CAD for Mac

If you are looking for open source drafting software, QCAD is for you. QCAD is available for Linux. The main features are 35 CAD fonts included, layers, blocks or grouping, object snapping, over 4800 standard predefined objects, hatches, fills, raster images. It is a free libre and open source 2D and 3D CAD (computer-aided design) program that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS. The software is written in C language and licensed under GNU GPL 3+ license. The stable version 2.3 release date of this software is December 24, 2016.

Vectorworks is an object-oriented CAD software for Mac OS. The software primarily uses for 2D Drafting, technical drawing, and highly effective 3D modeling. It gives 2D, 3D, production management, and presentation capabilities for all levels of the design course. It additionally very versatile, so designers have the complete freedom to design how they want and very handy to create, model, and present easily and precisely with one software.

Website – Vectorworks

2 AutoCAD for Mac

AutoCAD for Mac is a robust 3D free form design tool and powerful drafting capabilities for your favorite platform. It has a simple, Intuitive graphical User interface that makes your ideas into reality. It saves all your work into DWG format, so you can easily share files with clients, suppliers, and partners around the world, regardless of platform.

Website: AutoCAD for Mac

3 CADintosh for Mac

CADintosh for Mac is a 2D-CAD software for electrical, mechanical, and architectural drawings. It has interactive window redrawing, where users can work at the same time as the window redrawing. You can easily import and export your work into multiple formats such as HPGL, DXF, and PICT. There are two types of modes provided by the software. One is Pen oriented Mode, and another one is an individual Mode. Pen-oriented Mode gives you 8 line widths/line colors/pens, and personal Mode gives you line width from 0.0 to 99.99 mm, pattern, and colors.

Website: CADintosh for Mac

4 BRL-CAD for Mac

BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform solid geometry (CSG) modeling system. The software comes with an interactive geometry editor, ray-tracing for rendering & geometric analyses, network distributed frame buffer support, image & signal-processing tools.

Website: BRL – CAD

5 Domus CAD – 3D Architectural CAD for Mac

Domus CAD is a 3D Architectural Parametric CAD that allows you to create a three-dimensional element without starting from a two-dimensional plane. It provides ready features such as walls, floors, roofs, and stairs built from the onset in their complete three-dimensional form. You can easily see the 3D model changes in real-time as you design your plan.

Website: Domus.Cad

6 Sailcut CAD for Mac

Sailcut CAD is a sail design and plotting software. It means that you can design and visualize your sail and compute all panels’ actual growth in flat sheets. Sailcut CAD is ready to do cross cut, twist foot cut, vertical cut, mitre cut, and radial cut sail design as well as wing sails, all in quite a few languages. It alsoincludes a viewer whereyou’ll be able to assemble a hull, a rig, and a set of sails to see how they match. Sailcut CAD has been successful uses for making sails for racing and cruising yacht and model boats.

Website: Sailcut CAD

7 MacDraft Pro for Mac

MacDraft Pro is the 2D CAD software that makes it easy to design floor plans, architectural drawings, and illustrations simple on the Mac. Create detailed and professional 2D graphics in moments with this easy-to-use, powerful, and affordable drafting software.

With its precise vector tools, intelligent units, and fully-featured scaled atmosphere, MacDraft Pro is designed to implement an easy-to-use solution without wasting too much time learning techniques to use more complicated software.

The latest version of MacDraft Pro contains some significant changes and features that make it more intuitive, highly effective, and easy-to-use than ever before. Adding a wide range of features not only makes MacDraft Pro easier but also speeds up your design process.

Website: MacDraft Pro

8 HighDesign 2D CAD for Mac

HighDesign is the alternative, fully-featured 2D CAD software for Mac OS. It’s a perfect combination of advanced drafting and design tool with a modern, performance-based user interface designed to help the user in every stage of the creative process. HighDesign offers in-depth knowledge of drawing and editing skills, from required drafting methods to extra superior DXF/DWG compatibility.

Parametric tools like vector hatches and patterns, smart annotations, symbols with several views, partitions, columns, windows and doors, and more. The software is beneficial to satisfy the actual requirements of architects, engineers, and design professionals. It allows them to design complex projects with accuracy and strong management over several parts of the projects.

Website: HighDesign

9 QCAD for Mac

Free Cad Drawing Software For Mac

QCad is software for computer-aided drafting in two dimensions (2D). With QCad, you’ll be able to create technical drawings such as plans for buildings, interiors, and mechanical components or schemas and diagrams. QCad works on Windows, Mac, and many Linux and Unix systems. The source code of the QCad community edition is launched under the GPL license.

Website: QCAD

10 Graphite for Mac

Graphite is a 2D and 3D wireframe CAD software for Mac. The software is previously known as Vellum. It has a simple, easy-to-use user interface that helps creative people to create precision drawing and Drafting without having any knowledge. With Graphite, the user can create 2D and 3D wireframe designs of immense complexity and precision detail.

Website: Graphite

A common question from new CNC software users is, “What CAD program do you recommend?” As you might guess, the answer is, “It depends”. Here is a list of the best deals in free or inexpensive CAD programs.

One quick note, if you’re a Mac user then check out our list of 3D CAD programs for the Mac / OSX.

Free Form 3D Modeling Programs

3D modeling programs are used to make models for animations or video games and those models are never meant to leave the computer. These programs will let you design complicated shapes easily but they can make it more difficult to design mechanical shapes to exact dimensions.

Blender (Free) - Blender is a free, open source 3D modeling program. The interface is very non-traditional and will require some adjustment if you’ve got experience in a more traditional 3D design program. Amazon stocks a ton of books about Blender so it should be easy to find some material to help you out.

Free Cad Drawing Software For Mac Desktop

Silo3D ($99-$159) - Silo3D is a subdivision modeling program that, like Blender, is not primarily targeted at users trying to design models to be machined. It is incredibly powerful and the interface is easier to learn than Blender. This is a great value if you’re looking to model organic shapes.

Free Form CAD

Free form CAD programs let you design dimensionally accurate models but don’t impose any structure or workflow on your methods.

Sketchup (Free or $500)- Sketchup is a CAD program that was originally targeted to the architectural market. It is a very simple program to use but it isn’t well-suited for organic shapes. In 2006 is was acquired by Google and a free version was released. The free version will not export an STL file but several people have written plug-ins that allow Sketchup to export an STL without paying for the full version. The various approaches are discussed on their halp page

Viacad 3D ($199)- Viacad is a simple , powerful 3D CAD program. It isn’t as popular as some of the others here but it’s inexpensive and you can get up and running quickly. It is available for Mac and PC, making it unique in this list.

MoI ($295)- MoI (Moment of Inspiration) is a 3D CAD program that was designed to be usable on tablet or pen computers. Because of this, the user interface is simple and doesn’t require a lot of typing. It was written by a single guy, who was one of the original developers of Rhino, so it’s powerful without being bloated. It is equally well-suited to organic or mechanical shapes. Without a doubt, this is one to try.

Rhino ($995)- Rhino is one of the most powerful and flexible CAD programs anywhere. It has every kind of tool you could need and , like MoI, is equally well-suited to organic or mechanical shapes. It isn’t inexpensive but it does almost anything you could need. If you happen to be a student then you can get a significant discount. Version 5 will also be avialable on Mac OS X when it is released.

Free Cad Drawing Software For Mac

Parametric CAD

Parametric CAD programs keep the entire history of the model as it is being built. If you find the need to change a shape or dimension then you just go back in the history, make the change, and the model will be rebuilt automatically. If you make a big change then you may have to do a little work to get the model rebuilt properly but it’s still going to be faster than a program like Rhino. Parametric CAD programs are incredibly powerful if you are willing to spend the time to get your head around the workflow.

Cad Program For Apple Computer

https://www.freecadweb.org/ (Free) FreeCAD is a totally free and open-source parametric CAD package. Many of the open-source CAD/CAM options are a little rough because they are not incredibly popular so they don’t get as much development attention as more popular open-source programs.

That being said, FreeCAD is worth a look if you want a parametric CAD program that doesn’t have huge maintenence fees (like many do) or risk having the price terms changed in the future (like Inventor Fusion).

OnShape (Free - $80/Month)- OnShape is a new cloud-based CAD program from the same team that created Solidworks. It runs completely in the browser so it runs on PC, OS/X or even an iPad. There’s a range of pricing options and for many users, it’s totally free.

Free Cad Design Software For Mac

Alibre ($199- $1400)- Alibre is a very powerful parametric CAD program that is available for very little money if you only need to export to STL. They take a lot of pride in the fact that you can do 99% of what the very expensive programs can do at a fraction of the cost. As a comparison, Solidworks, one of the most popular programs in this category, will cost you a minimum of $3500 to buy it and $1200 a year for updates. The $199 version of Alibre is the most amazing deal on this page.

Cad Programs For Mac Computers

Although it’s in no way a low-cost program, Solidworks works very well with MeshCAM and it’s very popular with MeshCAM users. Just in case you’re one of them, we’ve got a Solidworks CAM page with some instructions to help get you started.