Drawing Express

Drawing Express is a 2D and 3D CAD software application. The software is developed, sold and supported by the British company 'Trial Systems Ltd' based in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire. The software was first released in 1994, developed by Peter Boyce & Steven Pearce with Anton Heymann.

A 3D model can be created while displaying it in rendered mode in 'real time'. The 3D model is automatically created from the 2D plans including all walls, openings, and roof. Other information can be added to the model such as sky, landscaping, people and cars for detail. The model can be exported to POV-Ray and rendered off inside the raytracer software giving more resolution and detail.

Supported platforms
Drawing Express is Windows based software which runs on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. The software works on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system.

Drawing Express can be run on a Mac with Windows installed. This is possible on any Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5, 10.6, 10.7 or 10.8 versions of the Mac OS X operating system, through the use of VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop- virtual machine software. Drawing Express can also be installed on a Bootcamp partition.

Data interchange
Drawing Express drawing files use a .EXP file extension. The software can import and export DWG and DXF files, among others. In version 2021, PDF files can be imported as drawings. Drawings can also be saved to PDF format using any available PDF converter. Images can be imported and exported. Importing works with most mainstream image file formats.

Version history

 * 1994 - Drawing Express (DOS)
 * 1998 - Drawing Express for Windows
 * 2000 - Drawing Express 2010
 * 2001 - Drawing Express 2011
 * 2003 - Drawing Express 2012
 * 2004 - Drawing Express 2013
 * 2005 - Drawing Express 2014
 * 2007 - Drawing Express 2015
 * 2008 - Drawing Express 2016
 * 2009 - Drawing Express 2017
 * 2011 - Drawing Express 2018
 * 2013 - Drawing Express 2019
 * 2015 - Drawing Express 2020
 * 2017 - Drawing Express 2021
 * 2019 - Drawing Express 2022
 * 2021 - Drawing Express 2023