[grandpa jay]

I have not received the email activation from 3ds and am running out of days. Any help will be appreciated.
Thank You
Jay

[DareBee]

register again and use your other email address

[grandpa jay]

I have tried that. I even loaded it into a different computer, and still the same problem.
Jay

[DareBee]

I can't help.
I have it running on 6 PCs with my latest install being about 2 weeks ago.
No issues for me.

[ghyman]

GrandpaJay - did you ever get it to work?

I am no longer able to use it; after my 6-month activation ended, I have not been able to use it because of activation problems.

A large number of users simply never receive the activation email - not in spam or anywhere else. It is a long-standing issue with DraftSight that they refuse to address; the only reply I received from them when I sent them numerous requests for assistance - including an offer to buy the paid version - was an email from them saying "We do not give support for the free version." So they actually can email their users, but for some reason their system simply does not send activation emails to everyone. Search their forums for "activation" and you will see it is a very long-standing issue. It is unfortunate they refuse to help anyone with this issue; it is otherwise a good copy of autocad for anyone still needing to use the older formats.

[Mike 1948]

Try this forum you may find some helpful info there :https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/40053

[ghyman]

I just returned after spending 2 weeks out of country at a customer site.

Draftsight would not work for me at all; neither my windows nor my Linux versions - They both would go no further than the "Your trial period is over, you must activate..." window.

Fortunately, I was able to get *some* work done using LibreCad, but their tooling supplier had sent every single file in DWG format, with no answer to repeated requests for DXF.

I ultimately had to wait until the end of each day to return to the hotel, and do any DWG work in SolidWorks (which requires a VPN to my company to access the license server.) This still forced me to use the SW interface, which is not very user-friendly for files in DWG format, but it did at least allow me to export to DXF and use LibreCad.

I have not considered that they simply stopped allowing free use, but that certainly explains the complete lack of support or answers to the issues brought up here time and again.

It would have been nice of them to have told their users - especially the ones (like me) who asked if purchasing the paid version would correct the issue. But after the past 2 weeks, I have stopped entertaining that idea at all; I am convinced that any technical issues that need resolved with *any* version will be fielded by the same lack of interest / lack of customer support (or possibly, lack of ability.)

It is unfortunate that there is such poor support / service for a good product.



Update:

I spoke with our SolidWorks VAR, they arrived at the same conclusion as Dassault: "Oh, that's the version that came with SolidWorks. We don't offer any support for the free version.'
OK - look. I'm not asking *how to use* the software and need some assistance, DSS provided this to us when we started buying licenses of SolidWorks - I'm just trying to get it to launch!

The problem is not with the free version of DraftSight, the problem is with their activation process. And since they have no desire to listen to one word from potential paid customers in order to find an issue with their activation system (which should be a relatively simple issue to find in an email subsystem, if they ever decided to actually look at it), I cannot fathom what their response would be if there ever was an actual issue with the software itself that would require them to show an interest in investigating a problem with the software (which would actually require them to find a functionality issue with their code.)

I've taken the only logical step.



I've uninstalled it.

It works better when I am not tempted to use it; the resultant frustration from dealing with a company that clearly does not care about their customers (or to gather data to correct an issue that has nothing whatsoever to do with the functionality of the actual product), simply makes me question the benefit of even trying to get it to work or consider buying the full (read: "supported") version.

LibreCad works just fine, and as an open-sourced piece of software (that installs and works first time on Linux as well as Windows) any issues are dealt with swiftly by the people who actually maintain the code. What a concept!