| | |  | General | Home » » » » AutoCAD Freestyle | | | | | | | Description: | | AUTOCAD FREESTYLE DVD | | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 7.5 inches | | Product Width:
| 5.5 inches | | Product Height:
| 0.25 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.25 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.5 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.3 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.6 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.25 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 40 reviews |
| | | System Requirements: | | | Platform:
| Windows Vista / Windows 7 / Windows XP | | Media:
| DVD-ROM | | Item Quantity:
| 1 |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 40 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 50 found the following review helpful:
 Not quite ready for prime time...and now it never will beJun 24, 2010
By W. B. Halper
Final Update - On February 1, 2011, I went to the Autodesk website to check for additional updates and found that FreeStyle had been withdrawn from sale. Customer support stopped April 1, 2011.
Update 10/7/2010 - The first product update was released a couple of weeks ago. The major change fixes the first item below...you can now create custom symbols and store them in the library. I'm still in the process of evaluating the release and will update this note after I've used it a bit more.
Original Review:
The designers of a package like AutoCAD FreeStyle face a classic challenge: It needs to be easy to use for a novice, with enough features to be useful, yet not so powerful that it will cannibalize sales of the high-end (and much more expensive) AutoCAD systems. After spending a couple of days using AutoCAD FreeStyle, I think the designers set the bar way too low. The interface is simple and easy to learn, but far too many features are missing for FreeStyle to be a competitive program. That's not to say that FreeStyle can't be used to produce usable drawings; it just could be much better if it included basic features that are in other systems. Let me go through some of the areas that stood out...
Symbol Library - A library is a collection of symbols that are created once and then used on multiple drawings. FreeStyle comes with a collection of prebuilt symbols that are sufficient to get started, however it's not a complete enough library for a lot of projects - when I attempted to draw my sprinkler system, I discovered that there are no sprinkler components listed. In most CAD systems, this problem is addressed by allowing the user to build custom symbols. Once they're added to the library, they can be repeatedly used in future drawings. This release of FreeStyle doesn't have that capability. The symbols that come with the program are all that you've got, and that simply isn't enough. Incidentally, what's in the library is even a little strange... the Electrical Symbols tab includes five Gas and Water symbols along with the basic electrical symbols and the Building Components section only contains six fireplace facades...I'm sure that in real life there are more building components than just those.
Paper Size and Scale - When you start a new drawing, the program asks you to select the size of the paper and the object that you' re going to draw. e.g. you pick 8.5 x 11" paper and select that the page represents a 30' x 40' space. The scale shows that ΒΌ" equals 1'. This makes perfect sense to anybody not used to using a CAD program, but is backwards from the norm...normally a designer would select a paper size and a scale.
Splines - Splines are a way of smoothly connecting a series of points. By adjusting the "handles", you can easily draw complex curves. FreeStyle doesn't have a way of drawing with splines. The menu allows you to draw with arc segments, straight lines and freehand "doodles". You can adjust the points of inflection on the doodle and eventually get to the desired curve, but it's not as easy as it seems. True spline capability would be easier.
Radius line joins - When drawing a floor plan, most lines meet with a sharp corner, but that's not always the case. Sometimes a drawing needs to have a rounded curve joining the two lines. Most 2-D drafting systems can do that automatically, but FreeStyle lacks that capability. You can manually accomplish the same thing by drawing a small arc, but why? You're only talking about a millisecond of computer time to have the program do it for you.
Double lines for walls - Often walls in architectural drawings are shown by two parallel lines, representing the inside and outside surfaces. Freestyle doesn't have that ability built-in. To do it correctly, it's a little more complicated that just having a double line as a selectable line type....you need to specify wall thickness, join corners correctly and scale appropriately as the drawing size changes. Again, all this can be done manually, but the basic idea is to have the program save time by doing the work for you. Incidentally, the work around is to simply draw a thick solid line for walls...look at all the sample drawings for examples.
Draw a wall of a house. Now drag a window or door from the symbol library and place it onto the wall. You'd think that the wall would break and allow the object to be inserted. It doesn't. OK, now manually break the wall into two separate line segments and drag the line ends apart to create the necessary break. That would work, if there was a way to break a line into two pieces, but there isn't. So you nuke the whole side of the house and redraw two separate line segments on either side of the door. That works...until you realize that the door is 6" to the left of where it should be.
The algorithm that calculates color fills is flaky. When you drag the fill icon over a fillable area, the area is highlighted with a light version of the fill color. It's a nice idea, so you can see exactly where the color's going. Unfortunately, a single open pixel prevents an area from filling. The highlighting, though, isn't nearly so discerning. It's not unusual to have an area highlight, but fail to fill when clicking on the mouse button. I also managed to fill in an object and then select the color and move it while leaving the outline behind...it was a little strange.
There's no instruction manual. You can get help for any of the commands by selecting that command and clicking the question mark icon. Clicking on the icon showing three stacked baby letter blocks takes you to the Freestyle website where there is more detailed information. It's annoying, though, not to have something you can skim through. I was trying to figure out how to color in a tree and it wasn't until I saw a picture in the on-line help that I realized that the color was coming from a filled in circle located behind the tree.
I could add more, but you get the idea. If the product manager at AutoDesk chooses, all of these can (and should) be fixed in a future release. Until then, though, I'm only giving FreeStyle two stars. The simple user interface is right on the mark for a non-technical consumer level product. The omitted features, though, cost it dearly in the ability to produce usable and functional drawings.
15 of 15 found the following review helpful:
Simple 2D designJun 23, 2010
By Nathan Beauchamp
"ConsumerAdvocate"
For simple interior design projects, AutoCAD Freestyle is ideal. It's much more limited than a full 3D rendering program, but what it does it does well. Want to plan out a new living room lay-out or kitchen remodel? It's very easy to use this program to create floor plans and design layouts. It's also very easy to save projects and then tweak them to meet your needs. I've enjoyed using the program and found it to be intuitive and easy to use if not incredibly robust when it comes to features. If you're used to AutoCAD, you may not like this new 'light' version. It's similar to making the transition from CS5 down to Lightroom 2.5--there is plenty of similarity, but you'll find yourself looking for tools or options that just aren't there. For someone new to designing floor plans and the life, AutoCAD Freestyle is perfect. It makes getting a usable design as quick and painless as possible.
Is it worth the price? Unless you really enjoy using graphing paper and a straight edge, yes it's worth it, especially if you plan to do more than one design. It's a valuable tool for the do-it-yourself type, weather you're re-doing a bathroom or your backyard. Being able to save to .PDF files or .BMP files makes transforming your designs into 'digital blue-prints' easy--I sent mine to a printer to be produced on 11X17" paper and they turned out fantastic!
8 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 OK Utility SoftwareMay 31, 2010
By Robert H. Knox
AutoCAD Freestyle is a scaled-down consumer version of the much pricier AutoCAD program
that has become an industry standard for computer-based drafting. Freestyle produces files
in true DWG format, allowing one to easily share files with AutoCAD users. Files can also
be created in PDF, DWF, JPEG, PNG or BMP formats for plenty of flexibility. I ran AutoCAD
Freestyle on my Windows XP PC with no issues. There's no Mac capability on this version.
Freestyle is user-friendly; within a few minutes after installation, and without referring
to tutorials, I was creating drawings. By using the tutorials, tips & tricks and the Help
menu, most users will be able to create drawings to suit their needs. Along with the
standard toolbar, available windows include Symbol and Fill Libraries, Layers, My Settings
and the Help window. The AutoCAD Freestyle community site lets you download sample drawings
if you don't want to start from scratch.
AutoCAD Freestyle will be most useful to those in the construction, landscaping and
electrical trades. It produces documents that look far more professional than a simple
scrap-paper sketch. No special training is required, though it's obviously not for
people with little or no PC knowledge. At around $150.00, Freestyle is not exactly cheap
for consumer software, but it's FAR cheaper than standard AutoCAD, and it's likely that
many users won't need that version's deep capabilities. Freestyle emerges as a good
dollar value in its way.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Nice piece of software for 2D designJul 16, 2010
By Phlogiston
Here are the pluses:
1) It is intuitive. One can start it up and begin using it immediately even if one has never used a CAD program. The menus make sense and it is quite usable.
2) There are an awful lot prefab items that can be used. Instead of drawing in a sink with a bunch of curves, shapes and lines, one can simply insert any number of sink designs that are included with the software. This feature, of course, makes it very easy for the layman to redesign one's kitchen, living room, yard, bedroom, workshop, etc.
3) The help menus are quite useful. Apart from launching with the option of opening any number of instructive (but short) videos, there are many quick tips as one goes and the help section itself goes fairly in depth.
4) The software is not terribly taxing on the CPU, memory or disk space. The footprint is quite reasonable by today's standards.
5) One can export one's work to PDF format. What is more, the PDFs are text searchable, which makes them quite useful and easy to archive.
The minuses:
1) Unlike some more robust CAD programs, this one does not do 3D work.
2) The price is a little bit high, but not unreasonable if one is going to use it several times.
3) It would be nice if documents could be exported to a few other formats (MS Office, etc.)
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Easy to use, very flexibleAug 19, 2010
By L. M. Tanaka
"mauireads"
This CAD software was very easy to use. Also, the templates for sidewalks, trees, etc made plotting out my garden very esy. I've tried using AutoCad and it was really hard to get started. Installing it was a breeze and even with my computer's limited RAM (only 1 GB) it ran easily.
I've just played around with designing a room but it was just as easy as doing the garden.
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