On 10/22/2013 02:45 AM, Stephen Michalik wrote:

Can someone point me to an inexpensive, or even free, CAD program I can use to draw circles and squares representing instruments?

I used the free (open source) 2D version of QCad when I designed my
panel for my LS3a:

http://www.qcad.org/en/qcad-downloads-trial

Since then the project has "forked" off LibreCad and I have used this
for later projects:

http://librecad.org/cms/home.html

They are very similar. QCad was bought out and commercialized and the
newer versions are not free. LibreCad was forked off from the last open
source version of QCad. Since then I think QCad may have released a few
updates on their open source version. The differences are mainly in the
documentation and fonts.

Both are 2D packages which save their files directly in "dxf" format.
The files can be read/written to with Autocad and machine shops with
lasor cutting machines should have no problems reading your files.

I can reinforce the comments on this thread about this being a 3D
excercise not a 2D one.

Have fun!

Ian