Convert 3D to 2D without AutoCAD, and without installing anything

What "free" usually means

A queue, a watermark, an upload of your proprietary geometry to somebody else’s server, and an output that turns out to be a flat outline with no dimensions. Then a signup wall when you try to download it.

What it means here

The engine runs in your browser, so there is no queue and no upload. Importing models, generating views, placing sections, adjusting every setting and studying the finished sheet are free and unlimited — no account, no trial clock, no watermark on screen. The one thing that costs money is taking the file away: $3 for a single export, or a monthly plan from $19 if you download regularly. You see exactly what you are buying before you buy it.

The AutoCAD commands this replaces

If you do have AutoCAD there are four routes from a 3D model to a 2D drawing, and it helps to know which one someone means when they ask how to do it.

• FLATSHOT — flattens the current 3D view into a 2D block. Fast, but it gives you one view, in whatever direction you happened to be looking, with nothing dimensioned.
• SOLVIEW then SOLDRAW — creates orthographic layout viewports and profiles the solid inside them. Proper aligned views, but layout-bound and awkward to re-run.
• SOLPROF — profiles a 3D solid inside a layout viewport, separating visible from hidden edges onto their own layers.
• VIEWBASE, VIEWSECTION and VIEWDETAIL — the model-documentation set. This is the modern answer: a base view, projected views, sections and details that update when the model does.

The same job in the other packages

Every CAD system has its own name for this, which is part of why it is such a hard thing to search for.

• SolidWorks — Make Drawing from Part/Assembly, then place views onto a sheet format.
• Fusion 360 — Create Drawing from Design.
• Inventor — a new IDW, then Create Drawing View.
• Rhino — Make2D, which returns curves but no sheet.
• SketchUp — send the model across to LayOut.
• FreeCAD — the TechDraw workbench.

What you give up, honestly

A browser tool is not a CAD seat and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise. You cannot edit the model here: Ortho2D documents geometry, it does not author it. There is no parametric link either — change the model and you regenerate the drawing rather than watching it update itself. Feature control frames, weld symbols and surface-finish callouts are not placed automatically. And the output is DXF, not DWG.

What you get in exchange is that a drawing exists at all, ten minutes after somebody sent you a file, on a machine with nothing installed and no licence to find. For a quote, a cut list, a shop asking for dimensions or a supplier who needs a PDF, that is the right way round.

And if you do have AutoCAD

The DXF Ortho2D writes is an ordinary DXF: real lines, polylines, circles, arcs, hatch, text and dimension entities on named layers, not a flattened picture. Open it, change anything you disagree with, add the callouts your standard requires, and save it out as DWG in one step.

A fair number of people use it exactly that way — as a first pass, because starting from a dimensioned sheet is quicker than starting from a solid, even when you own every licence involved.