In the business world, each sector has its own standard software, a program that is used by 90% of the employees in that field of work. For engineering, technical and architectural design, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, AutoCAD software is almost universal and also the best.
I don't really know if it is the fault of the monopoly of AutoDesk, the company that produces AutoCad or for the actual excellence of this program, but there are not many alternatives.
Unfortunately, no software is perfect and it doesn't matter how useful or full of features it is; AutoCAD is no exception.
An important feature that AutoCAD lacks is the ability to export a drawing to a PDF, the standard of business documents.
For those who need to convert Autocad DWG files to PDF, I recommend using the free Autodesk DWG program TrueView . The program is small and free and works with all CAD files created by any version of AutoCad. Now, to convert a DWG file to PDF, you can press the TrueView logo on the top left, then go to Export and choose PDF from the menu. Pressing then on Plot you can choose how to export the file and the quality of the PDF to be generated.
The program also works as a DWG file viewer, to open CAD projects even without installing the AutoCad program.
Another interesting feature of the DWGgateway software is the ability to open any dwg file created with previous versions of Autocad and convert them to the version you have on your computer. It becomes a great relief to be able to open drawings and .dwg files created with other AutoCAD versions (otherwise it could not be done) so as not to have to update the program by force and to continue viewing old files created with previous versions.
The conversion from a PDF file to Autocad file can be obtained from the ZamZar web application, from the OnlineConvertFree website and also using CloudConvert
To those who are not satisfied with the DWG TrueView program I can say that Autodesk offers other programs that read DWG files, open them, convert them and allow them to be printed as Autodesk Design Review and also allows you to add revision notes to DWG files.
To end the discussion, 2D CAD assisted drawings can be created, without Autocad, with the QCAD software, or with LibreCad, a free CAD program for Windows, Linux and Mac . With QCAD you can create technical drawings such as building plans, interiors or diagrams.
