Although it may sound strange for 2D projects and rapid technical presentation drawings I have for many years used CorelDraw. I like the ease of use and usability. The problem is the speed and response program for complex drawings. That does not compare to AutoCAD or similar (Archicad, Allplan, etc.). Closest to my idea of approaching is Vectorworks. The price is also important. Does anyone have any other recommendations of your own practice? I welcome the mentioned speed, simplicity, 100% import-export DWG, opportunities to work with bitmaps. thanks for the responsePeter
Have you tried CorelDRAW Technical Suite (formerly CorelDESIGNER)?
http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4970084
yes, I used once CDesigner v10 or 12. Then the normal CDraw X3 or X6 now. For all speed was virtually the same. Maybe it is my subjective impression, but when I compare it with Illustrator, it's a big difference (on the same machine). Unfortunately, Illustrator does not meet me for other things. It has not what it is supposed Corel. Technical Suite X6 is different in speed? It has meaning to buy it? The machine is older HPXW4400 pc (CoreDuo 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA Quadro 1500 win7 64bit, SSD HDD). For me it's not so slow machine for similar work.
Corel DESIGNER X6 and CorelDRAW X6 are based on the same code. The performance in loading DWG files or similar tasks will not be different between those 2 applications.
What is different between CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER is the feature set. For working with CAD files you may need those technical illustration tools like isometric drawing, annotations (callouts), dimensions etc. that are unique to Corel DESIGNER.
Corel DESIGNER X6 (and CorelDRAW X6) comes in a 64-bit application flavor. That should make a difference to previous versions of the application with regards to performance.
You should try out CorelDRAW Technical Suite X6 as 64-bit application suite on your Windows 7 64-bit OS. And if you already have CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6 installed, you will need CorelDRAW Technical Pack instead (to not install CorelDRAW X6 and the other Graphics Suite components twice which is technically not possible). Please note that Technical Pack will have to match the application version of the installed CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6 (e.g. when Graphics Suite X6 is installed as 32-bit application suite you can install Technical Pack as 32-bit only).
And if you're looking for the full DWG file editing power you may want to have a look at CorelCAD. The current version 2013.5 is 64-bit enabled as well and it offers 100% DWG compatibility. It's a CAD application though - not as easy to use as the graphics applications CorelDRAW or Corel DESIGNER.
Klaus,
You are right about the fact that CorelCad is different than Coreldraw X6, but I am able to use them both together pretty well.