I just started using this, and I’m quite happy with it. I really wish I had tried this originally. It’s not terrific for loopy, artistic things, but it is sooooo much more intuitive (for me anyway) for making things exactly the right size.
To give you an idea of what my intuition is, I use sketchup for 3D, and I learned CAD using autocad about 15 years ago, when it was still 2D. I really really need to be able to type in what dimensions things are, instead of just clicking. I like to click on the rectangle tool, then either snap, or type in one corner, then either snap to or type in the size of the rectangle. Then click the circle and snap, or type in the center, then type in the radius, and I’m done.
I tried inkscape, a lot, and it’s great for making 5 things evenly spaced, but it’s frankly too many steps to make things 188mmx167mm. At least, it doesn’t seem that intuitive to me. I’ve spent about 30 minutes in librecad so far, maybe I’ll find out all the inkscape fancyness is in there somewhere too. I do see buttons for importing images, and such.
The output from librecad is a dxf file, which loads right into estlcam. I haven’t tried it, but I’m hoping I can also import then into inkscape, as a layer or something. That way, I can do some real dimensional stuff in libre, and then add some smooth arcs, or add in images, etc. in inkscape, then off to estlecam to CAM it all up.
I use debian linux, so I just sudo apt-get install libreoffice. You windows users will have to use your mouse 