Preliminary Site Plan Software?

[Moroni Laulu-Pututau]

What inexpensive/free scalable software's do you guys use to mock up very basic and preliminary site plans to run through the city in the early stages of entitlement?

[Mike Smith]

@Moroni Laulu-Pututau We use Softplan, which is a residential CAD program.  It's mainly to create construction documents for home construction, however, we use the Siteplan portion of the program preliminary siteplans to conduct feasibility studies with the city municipalities.  It wouldn't be good enough to create a compete preliminary plat, but the surveyors normally do that in our area anyway.

The cost is around $2500 but they have a monthly subscription for around $80 I believe.  It's the easiest CAD type program to learn I feel.  Anything AutoCAD related will have a very long and steep learning curve.