CorelCAD by B.L.

This is a piece of software that you have to be a little bit adventurous and willing to look things up if you’re going to get started with it. I don’t really think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Expert users obviously don’t want to pay more on a product to cover the development time required to create and maintain really good tutorial modes. It’s just really important that you understand that there’s not a lot of guidance within the program about what you’re doing. I had to look at books that were written to teach CAD programs.

Installation was no big deal for me. It took a little while, but there were no mishaps (on a W7 64bit computer with an i5 processor). I haven’t run into any bugs or had any other real problems either, at least not outside of those I caused for myself by not being 100% clear on what I was doing at every moment.

I’m a computer person, so trying out new software and being okay with not knowing what every button is going to do right off isn’t a big deal to me. As I got a handle on what was going on, it was kind of amazing how many features are packed in here. If you’re looking to learn CAD or improve your skills with it, there’s definitely plenty here to do the job, but you’re going to have to be willing to seek out the explanations and the how’s and why’s somewhere else. If you already know what you’re doing, the most useful thing I can tell you is that the software has been reliable and has done what it’s supposed to do. No mysterious crashes or obnoxious bugs have popped up on my system, at least.