Re: gEDA-user: Open Source mechanical CAD on the horizon

[Dave N6NZ <n6nz@xxxxxxxx>]

On Feb 24, 2010, at 6:09 PM, Girvin R. Herr wrote:

> 
> 
> Kai-Martin Knaak wrote:
>> I just got aware of the open source mechanical CAD project freecad. It hit the debian repository a month ago. Although it is still lacking important features, much of the basic infrastructure is already up and running. 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeCAD_(Juergen_Riegel)
>> 
>> ---<(kaimartin)>----
>>  
> Kai,
> Have you, or anyone in the group, used FreeCAD for any useful work?
> I just downloaded the source code for Linux and took a look at the docs.  Although they may not be up to date (file date of Jan 7, 2010), they have no substance.  It is proclaiming there isn't yet much in the way of GUI commands to implement the internal drawing functions.
> 
A couple of weeks ago I took a look at the state of FreeCAD, but haven't done anything very useful with it.  I had a brief forum chat with the developers.  I think they will tell you that the current state is mainly useful to developers.  They are driving it via scripts to build things, and gradually adding a GUI.  I think if you are expecting much in the way of GUI today, you will have to start following the source code repository  and surf the bug frontier along with the developers.  Of course, you may find if you download it that I haven't gotten quite the correct impression, because as I said I haven't done much of anything with it yet -- too busy with other things.

All that said, FreeCAD has come a huge distance in a year.  If they make as much progress in the next year as they have in the past, we will have the makings of a good 3D parametric modeling program.  They certainly deserve support and encouragement. 

If you are looking for 2D CAD, then go with QCad.  I've done a lot with that.  It is very mature and very solid.  I use it for all my 2D CAD designs, and I've used their .dxf I/O library in a CAM program for one of my tools. 

-dave

<much stuff snipped out>



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