Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corporation has paid for my travel, accommodations, and some meals for the 2011 SolidWorks Launch Blogger event.

Coincidence? You tell me.

On the day that Autodesk announces that their popular 2D offering AutoCAD is going to be offered for the Mac, Dassault Systemes let the bloggers in Concord, MA know that the latest 2D product from them, DraftSight,  will also be available on the Mac in a couple of weeks.  Then a couple of months later they will also offer DraftSight for Linux.

Here however is the kicker.  Why pay for the Autodesk offering when the Dassault Systemes offering will be for free?  Let me put this into perspective for you.  You are in the market for a new car and two of your favorite car dealerships have almost identical cars on their lots.  One car has power seats and it is going to cost you around $20,000.00.  The other car does not have power seats and they are giving this car away.  Which one are you going to decide to pick up?

This may be an extreme example but it gets the point across.  DraftSight offers 90-95% of the functionality that it’s counterpart does.  The one big difference between the two is that DraftSight is free while it’s competition is far from it.

If you aren’t one of the over 40,000 people that have downloaded DraftSight already you owe it to yourself to check it out.  If you are a Mac user looking for a native 2D application keep your eyes and ears open to the SolidWorks blogging community in the next couple of weeks to find out when it goes live.