Re: gEDA-user: OT: Mechanical Cad for Linux

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

Hello --

This topic of conversation is very interesting to me.  We have been
planning on playing with mechanical CAD packages at our next formal
Free Dog meeting.  Therefore, I have downloaded both QCad and BRL-CAD
and have played around with them for -- oh -- about 20 seconds each.

QCad can be built from sources, but requires Qt libraries, amongst
other things.  The source version apparently doesn't enable poly
lines.  Since I want to use poly lines, and I don't have the Qt libs
installed on my laptop (where I do most playing around), I didn't d/l
the source version.

Instead, I downloaded the binary version for Linux.  It has everything
statically linked in.  It is a 2D drawing program, similar -- in my
experience -- to AutoSketch, which was a kind of baby AutoCAD offered
by AutoDesk years ago.  I don't know if AutoSketch is still around,
but it was very useful for quickie 2D mechanical sketches.  However,
AutoSketch did tend to crash freqently.

The QCad binary version was pretty nice, and -- in the brief period I
played with it -- appeared to be professional and polished.  Drawing
lines, boxes, and circles can be accomplished in a number of ways,
which is good.  I couldn't figure out how to automatically dimension
anything I drew however, and I couldn't figure out how to enter shapes
by typing sizes or coordinates (instead of drawing with the mouse).
Has anybody else figured these out?  Or are they possible?

The big annoyance with the free-download QCad is that it is nagware.
A box pops up every 10 minutes complaining that you are using the free
version and suggests that you buy the package.  Since it's only $20,
there is no reason to not buy it, I guess.  Anyway, I support anybody
who is making money by offering Linux-based CAD products.  However, I
haven't sent in a check yet becuase I haven't needed to actually use
QCad yet. 

As for BRL-CAD, I download and built the package.  It's classic GPL,
open-source, free-as-in-beer software, which is cool.  However, it is
not a single application, but is rather a *huge* collection of various
utilities used for creating & manipulating 3D models of objects.  In
this sense, it is not a classical CAD drawing package like SolidWorks
or ProE, at least as far as I can tell.  Also, the main app -- mget --
seems to be a 3D drawing program, but you drive it from a CLI instead
of by using the mouse to draw.  *That* would take some getting used
to, if you ask me.  It's probably good for scripting, though.  

If anybody else knows better how to use BRL-CAD, or can point me to a
mouse-driven drawing editor, please speak up!

Thanks,

Stuart


> 
> Em Seg 05 Set 2005 23:23, Marvin Dickens escreveu:
> > Hello Everyone,
> >
> > This is OT, but the answers I get on this list are
> > intelligent. We are looking for a decent mechanical
> > CAD package for Linux and quite frankly, QCAD does
> > not cut it. Does anyone have any suggestions? FWIW,
> > we are considering:
> >
> > Varicad and Graphiteone
> >
> > Any thoughts?
> >
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Marvin
> 
> Take a look at BRL CAD.
>