DraftSight is a proprietary freeware 2D CAD (computer-aided design or computer-aided drafting) product for engineers, architects, designers, draftspeople, students and educators. The product was developed by Dassault Syst?mes and lets users create, edit and view DWG and DXF files.

DWG files contain the binary data for CAD design and it is the drawing format for many CAD programs. DWG is a long-time abbreviation for "Drawing." A DXF, or Drawing Exchange File, is used to convert CAD files into a generic format that can be read by other CAD software products.

DraftSight competes against more than three dozen 2D or 2D/3D hybrid products on the market. General availability of DraftSight for Windows was released in February 2011 and was downloaded more than 1.8 million times as of December 2011.

File formats

DraftSight allows users to access legacy DWG/DXF files, regardless of which CAD software was originally used to create them. According to industry estimates, there are more than three billion DWG legacy files in existence.[3]

Platforms/operating systems

DraftSight runs on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (general release), Mac OS X and Linux (Mac and Linux are currently in beta).

DraftSight functions

1. Read and write support for DWG/DXF files
2. File | Save to DWT/DWG/DXF files back to previous versions ( need email activation)
3. Create binary or ASCII DXF files
4. Attach image files (.bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tif, & .tiff)
5. Attach external reference drawings
6. File | Print to .plt, .jpg, .pdf, .png, & .svg file formats.
7. Save as .wmf?, .jpeg, .pdf, .png, .sld, .svg, .tif, & .stl
8. Multi-page PDF creation
9. Publish to eDrawings or Drawings Now
10. File | export | Export To *.bmp, *.emf, *.jpg,*.pdf, *.png, *.sld,*.svg, *.tiff file formats.