What's the best cad program

Terry Thomas was the best cad

Terry-Thomas_in_Where_Were_You_When_the_Lights_Went_Out.jpg
 
My usage of CAD is very basic, basically just CSG subtract to create simple doorways. Apparently, CSG subtracting in level editors is an anti-pattern which they try to make awkward (For this reason I maintain a fork of GtkRadiant called OpenRadiant).

carve.png
 
In the past i used kicad to develop a "print board, it was an a.m. receiver". Then i let it made by a Chinese company.
Just sending over the gember file.
 
The OP list of CAD programs does not distinguish 2D vs 3D.
I use cad/freecad and have been able to develop and 3D resin print prototypes.
  • It has a substantial learning curve - I watched FreeCAD tutorials on youtube: MangoJelly FreeCAD youtube tutorials
  • It is fully open source, has a large community and a new release is in release candidate status
  • It has a number of "work benches" that enable you to assemble and animate the parts of your project.
  • If you have ideas that may be commercially viable, it is unlikely to compromise your Intellectual Property - important when applying for patents
  • I used the TechDraw work bench, with some graphics/gimp filters, to generate 2D patent drawings
  • There are an number of cloud based 3D CAD programs, Fusion360 is popular. You have no guarantees that your work will be confidential.
  • After 5 or 6 tutorials, I could produce code and review the new tutorials as they come out.
To make prototypes, you have to generate g-code that your 3D printer understands. This is done with Slicers and the only opensource slicer is cad/prusaslicer. My resin printer uses a *.ctb format (Chitubox) and try's to link to Chitubox's servers in Mainland China. The link fails in Debian.

I never delved deep into 2D CAD programs. From an opensource perspective, cad/librecad is a fork of cad/qcad.
cad/qcad has some close source elements while librecad is fully opensource.
 
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