Last Updated on June 11, 2023
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software company that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, product design, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. It bills itself as a “… leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software”.
The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, who was a joint developer of the first versions of AutoCAD, the company’s best known software application. Autodesk is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, it has over 11,000 employees, and is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.
While Autodesk develops many high quality applications they are proprietary software. And the vast majority of their products are not available for Linux. This series looks at the best free and open source alternatives.
All articles in this series:
| Alternatives to Autodesk's Products | |
|---|---|
 | 3ds Max is a 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. |
 | Arnold is software for rendering three-dimensional, computer-generated scenes using unbiased, physically-based, Monte Carlo path tracing techniques. |
 | AutoCAD is computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software. It's used in industry, by architects, project managers, engineers, graphic designers, city planners and others. |
 | EAGLE is a scriptable electronic design automation (EDA) application with schematic capture, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, auto-router and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) features. |
 | Flame is 3D visual effects (VFX), finishing, and color grading software. It includes AI-powered tools and remote solutions. |
 | Maya creates assets for interactive 3D applications (including video games), animated films, TV series, and visual effects. |
 | MotionBuilder is 3D character animation software. The software is designed for virtual cinematography, motion capture, and traditional keyframe animation. Capture, edit, and play back complex animations. |
 | Mudbox is 3D digital painting and sculpting software. Sculpt and paint highly detailed 3D geometry and textures. |
 | ReCap lets you create rich and accurate digital models of existing conditions. Capture high-quality, detailed models of real-world assets. |
 | ShotGrid is project management software used for visual effects and animation project management in television shows and movie production and video game development. |
 | Sketchbook is a raster graphics software app intended for expressive drawing and concept sketching. It's also useful for making animations. |
 | Tinkercad is an online 3D modeling program that runs in a web browser. Tinkercad uses a simplified constructive solid geometry method of constructing models. |
Most of the AudoDesk replacement tools you site are drawing or painting tools and do not really provide an alternative to the core AutoCAD tool. Yet you do not even mention FreeCAD which does exactly that.
As for Eagle it is a good EDA tool (though may no longer be free), but no one in the industry has used AutoCAD as and EDA tool for years, probably decades. Eagle was widely used to replace Cadence/OrCAD and Altium, the superior tool, which I know is GPL is KiCAD, and it is under active development.
This series is quite new. The articles currently published do not provide alternatives to AutoCAD and are not designed to. They highlight the best free and open source alternatives for the proprietary products mentioned.
We are busy compiling articles for other Autodesk products, as well as expanding our series for free and open source alternatives to big proprietary software companies products including from Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
One article scheduled for publication will, of course, cover the best free and open source alternatives to AutoCAD.