Control.com - Nerds in Control

when starting a new project, I use to draw a layout of all I/Os involved in the application. Differently to most P&ID, I need to sketch the main parts of the machinery in axonometry view, adding references for PLC I/O location and address.

I am familiar with AutoCAD, but it's quite huge for such a simple task. I also tested MS Visio (it comes with MS Office Pro) but it lacks axonometry view/drawing and has some flaws in grid representation and snapping.

My question: is there any good, tiny, simple CAD (cheap/free would be great) which can easily draw axonometry views?
An example of what I need is available here: www.runmode.com/temp_example/iomap_example.pdf

thank you
Luca Gallina

I have not actually used this one, but it looks nice and simple
:: http://www.cadstd.com/index.html

Bill Sturm

DraftSight is very similar to AutoCAD LT. Not sure it will do what you want. Alibre definitely will work, and is reasonably priced (for CAD software, anyway). SketchUp might work. The LibreOffice Draw component is another possibility.

If you find something you like let us know.

-James Ingraham
Sage Automation, Inc.

I've had good success with DeltaCAD. It's inexpensive and very powerful.

first of all, thank you for valuable directions.

After a brief evaluation of suggested programs, I've chosen DraftSight: it's fast, free and it provides AutoCAD commands in the way I'm familiar with (I work mostly with command line).

Thanks again
Luca Gallina

The last few months have been using draftsight. It works reasonably well, especially as a freeware type product.

The biggest gripe I have is that the text find and replace function will only work abou 10 times. If you try to use it more than that it puts nulls i as the replace text instead of what you ask it to replace it with.

I use DoubleCad XT (Free version) at home. It is the most AutoCAD like mechanical drawing I have seen and it is free. There are a few minor things that are different but not like I've seen in other programs. The free version is really free from a price standpoint (not to be confused with open source that is).

KEJR