UGS: 2D SolidEdge -- Now Free!

UGS announces that its Solid Edge 2D Drafting software (US$995) is now free from a new online Web page at www.solidedge.com/free2d.

Solid Edge 2D Drafting includes:

- drawing layout.
- diagramming.
- annotation and dimensioning set to ISO, ANSI, BSI, DIN, JIS and UNI drafting standards.
- engineering sketchpad that converts freehand sketches into 2D dimension-driven drawings.
- drag-and-drop diagramming using electrical and P&ID standard symbols.
- wizard for importing AutoCAD drawings.
- available in English now; German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, and Russian to come later.

The software's free; support and automatic upgrades will cost you. UGS hopes this'll cause you to abandon costly AutoCAD, and then switch over to their 3D MCAD software (SolidEdge, Velocity Series, NX, etc) using their four-step "Evolve to 3D" program.

Update 1

After providing personal information for pre-download registration, the 239MB download didn't work for me when I used Opera, my default Web browser. (I got a "Forbidden - You don't have permission to access /pub/SE2DDraft.exe on this server" message.) Retrying with Internet Explorer worked.

(SolidEdge tech support has since confirmed to me that you have to use Internet Explorer to register and get the download.)

Over on the Alibre forums, BARONVOR comments on the free software "Anything to make a buck"!

Update 2

Oops. It works only on Windows XP. (After the half-hour-long download and installation, a dialog box pops up tell me I have the wrong operating system.)

UGS has now included the IE and XP requirements on the Web page.

Comments

[Jim]

Because we at UGS care about our users. :)

[Tommy]

I see the following in red ...

NOTES: You must use Internet Explorer version 6.0 or later to perform this download.
Solid Edge 2D Drafting requires Windows XP.