Re: gEDA-user: panel/case design

[John Griessen <john_g@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Joel N. Weber II wrote:
 I strongly dislike the idea of software which is free as
> in beer but not speech, and the idea of causing myself to have a
> windows machine so that I can design a faceplate is rather
> unappealing.


If you want to do a 2D design with dimensions that are architecture
style, human readable when printed, saves in the DXF format, and
has construction of lines circles squares, but is klunky for reusing groups
of items, then a GPL starting point of a tool
is cadvas.

It worked better than qcad for me doing a steel welding layout recently
that has about 60 lines, 3 text notes, 16 sets of dimensions, several arcs,
and 70 or so circles used as a texture area to represent concrete.

Constructing from geometry ideas like bisecting an angle or distance with a
circle instersection is easy.   Dragging groups of lines or anything is not
implemented at all though.

It has import DXF, but I'm not sure why the imported DXF lands somewhere on
the drawing canvas, or how to change where, yet.  Perhaps by text editing the
DXF file.  Does DXF have a bounding box defined?

Cadvas has no indication in advance of how the postscript output will be.  It
puts the drawing I did in a page file oriented as the drawing window is at the
moment
of clicking print.  when I send that to a printer with default portrait, the
width ends up fitting in the 8.5 inch width of the page.

I got some printouts fitting across a landscape page, but it took some
postscript post-processing fiddling.

It's good!  Use it for faceplates.

John Griessen

from author site:
==========================
http://members.localnet.com/~blanding/cadvas/
=============================================
My favorite CAD is CoCreate SolidDesigner and me10, so I have borrowed rather
heavily from that experience and have tried to create a similar look and feel in
CADvas. Here are some shortcuts I have implemented:

    * SHIFT key to select the center of an arc or circle.
    * CTRL-LMB to pan the view
    * CTRL-RMB to zoom
    * MMB to end current operation
    * RMB for popup view options

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