IronCAD

First of all, because it doesn't cost $10K to deploy it. Secondly, because it is incredibly capable and I have not found anything I can't do with it. It has some fantastic tools that no other software has, one of them being what they call the "TriBall." It's a tool for manipulating objects and it's so fast and efficient.

It doesn't come with all the CAD format importers you need. If you share files with other more expensive software users, you may have to purchase additional importers. If you work alone like me, you rarely need that but occasionally I'll have a file I can't import and have to request an alternate format that I can. IronCAD can import a lot of formats by default, but a few exotic ones are not included.

The workflow is very efficient and with a minimal learning curve. It was easy to transition from Draftsight to IronCAD and we can do so much more with this program.

Very little cons, we work with a lot of large assemblies and IronCAD often switches into large assembly mode automatically. This had to be turned off to allow for a deeper level of editing but can be useful in certain circumstances.

While IronCAD is feature rich and generally bug-free, it is an outstanding value when compared products like SolidWorks.

Like any CAD program, there is a learning curve. Once you get past the initial learning curve, you can quickly become productive with IronCAD The Triball object positioning tool is the best; it makes moving 3D objects very easy.

While there are many video tutorials available to help anyone learn and use IronCAD, the lack of a comprehensive, current User Manual is a negative. I recognize that such a manual would be a large undertaking, but I still think it is needed.

After many years of struggling against the giants of Autodesk Inventor and Dassault's SolidWorks we have now cracked the tipping point and find people are keenly embracing IronCAD over the other choices. As far as I can recall we have never had a former user of the competitor software ever return to those products and that is a testament to IronCAD's abilities and productivity increases for its users.

Simply the lack of proactive marketing by the developers who were very focused on the software and its abilities rather than getting involved in its awareness in the market. If they had been more marketing focused in the early years then they would have had the development funds earlier for product enhancements.