[jespi]

Rhino for 2D work?

Yes!! Is very similar to autocad 2D, l mean, command line and same kind of commands, but as I said before Rhino have a few useful commands that autocad miss. Autocad is a bit more "advanced" than rhino in layout features as gradient fills... but to be fair I must say that I also find very limited the layout features within Autocad and I always fine tune my drawings in illustrator. But for construction drawings Rhino can make anything and more than autocad is able to do.

[jespi]

Polyxo was faster!

[Fernando Tella]

I'm feeling old.

BTW I have just tried ZWCAD and is a nice copy of AutoCAD and uses around half the memory AutoCAD does.

[kami]

dunno about rhino and 2d. it's not very user-friendly and efficient on 2d drawings. i always feel very slow when trying to draw 2d with it. but I'll give it a second try, since its much cheaper than those overpriced 2d software.
also, rhino gets pretty slow with a lot of 2d lines and elements

[Leonardo]

how much does it cost?
I don't want to fill out a form to find out

[kami]

I think around 1000$. Hope I'm not completely wrong.

[yanada]

I think around 1000$. Hope I'm not completely wrong.

Vectorworks 2009 Fundamentals is $1295 (Parasolid Kernel Pumps Up Vectorworks 2009)

[polynurb]

There's a reason why Acad's the most widely used cad program (and the most copied).

asfaik that is more the case because "back in the days" acad had no hardware dongle so it was easy to crack...microstation which is the much more complete package had a HW dongle and it never spread as much as Acad did...

.. you mentioned 3d capabilities of acad.. microstation was always lightyears ahead in this area.. unfortuneatly it is like acad also difficult to learn and it is not widely used by architects where i live.. so rhino found it's place as tool along acad...

I worked on many architectural projects in the last 8 years which we could not have completed without the use of rhino as 3d frontend in design/construction...
as a 2d solution it is indeed limited. speed greatly depends on Ogl/HW line acceleration (graphics card) so you won't be able to use it for creating construction documents of an entire hospital for exapmle... but it is totally sufficient for the "single family house"

anyway with the global depression ahead i think more people will generally go for cheaper solutions than a 5000€/seat software...

[Fernando Tella]

I just got an e-mail from ZWCAD reseller here in Spain; these are the prices here:

ZwCAD 2009 Standard (solo 2D): 450,00 EUR
ZwCAD 2009 Professional (2D & 3D): 550,00 EUR

They also made some discounts for extra licenses.