Drawing in Linux

Pete, I do not personally make any CAD drawings. I am going to investigate it a little. I know that there is BRLCAD for Linux available, I tried it a while ago and found to be powerful. I am looking at CYCAS right now. Seems to work, not that I know anything. Cycas is a free (of charge) program, with some use limitations, but you can upgrade for a ful license for 48 euros.

BRLCAD is completely free software.

That's the only reason I've stayed with Windoze - CAD.

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

This subject has been on my mind for quite a while.

I use Ubuntu 8.04 and have had some success by installing WINE. This allows me to use IntelliCAD , from

It doesn't work perfectly but it is a lot better than nothing.

Hope this helps.

Lewis.

Pete, I'm running Ubuntu Hardy and found a 2D/3D drafting programme called Medusa4 PL, quite free for the personal version (watermark beneath the drawing on the printout stating this)

So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart

I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in many ways.

I would say as a Windows software developer that some of those comments can be leveled at MS Windows software and documentation as well. I have an MSDN susbscription and for many things these days google is a better source of documentation than the MSDN help and I'm not the only one to think so, a fellow programmer spoke to some MS developers that said the same.

Heavy on the solid modeling but weak on intuitive drafting.

Lots of analysis features (that I'll never use).

My impression is that it's a great system for programmers by programmers.

From Wiki:

Although BRL-CAD can be used for a variety of engineering and graphics applications, the package's primary purpose continues to be the support of ballistic and electromagnetic analyses. In keeping with the Unix philosophy of developing independent tools to perform single, specific tasks and then linking the tools together in a package, BRL-CAD is basically a collection of libraries, tools, and utilities that work together to create, raytrace, and interrogate geometry and manipulate files and data

But then I'm pretty spoiled, Stuart. I was using Autocad (under DOS) when I discovered Design CAD. Acad went into the bit bucket immediately, and Ive never regretted the choice.

The difference is that DC was designed by draftsmen to primarily do drafting. Yes, it also does solid rendering, ray tracing, shadows and smoke and mirrors (V18 on).

As usual, YMMV...

Richard

I try not to, too often, call another man's dog ugly...

Well, for relatively simple work, there's xdraft:

Still waiting for a Linux version of Sketchup, myself.

"Pete C." fired this volley in news:4988c526$0 $25076$ snipped-for-privacy@unlimited.usenetmonster.com:

None of that really addresses BRLCAD's condition.

BRLCAD was written BY command-line programmers FOR command-line programmers. It's a command-driven 3D CAD system that requires that the user define objects with a list of parameters. It doesn't (didn't at my last use) have an "intuitive" GUI interface. You cannot just "draw" objects in it; you must _define_ them with a string of operands.

Now... there are some benefits to that, like being able to ably structure the order in which polygons are define, etc. But there are quite capable post-processors in GUI-driven CAD systems that will re- order your drawings in order to make "machine sense". So, the inability to simply _draw_ a 3D object in BRLCAD makes it difficult to use and completely un-intuitive to the visually-oriented user.

After all, it was developed by the military, FOR the military. What about them has ever made much sense? (ex-Navy river-rat)

LLoyd

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 23:49:48 +0000 (UTC), the infamous snipped-for-privacy@green.rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) scrawled the following:

If I might alliterate, won't Wine work?

-- Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. -- George S. Patton

MS "documentation" is about as marginal as it gets, but at least it's consistent.

It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft" and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

I've never gotten wine to work for anything useful... I've only got about two applications that require me to use Windows, and I can run one of those in virtualbox.

Actually, Lloyd, I DID reply to that. But I don't see it here, so... try again!

Stuart Wheaton wrote: > cavelamb wrote: >> Ignoramus14358 wrote: >

Heavy on the solid modeling but weak on intuitive drafting.

Lots of analysis features (that I'll never use).

My impression is that it's a great system for programmers by programmers.

From Wiki:

Although BRL-CAD can be used for a variety of engineering and graphics applications, the package's primary purpose continues to be the support of ballistic and electromagnetic analyses. In keeping with the Unix philosophy of developing independent tools to perform single, specific tasks and then linking the tools together in a package, BRL-CAD is basically a collection of libraries, tools, and utilities that work together to create, raytrace, and interrogate geometry and manipulate files and data

But then I'm pretty spoiled, Stuart. I was using Autocad (under DOS) when I discovered Design CAD. Acad went into the bit bucket immediately, and Ive never regretted the choice.

The difference is that DC was designed by draftsmen to primarily do drafting. Yes, it also does solid rendering, ray tracing, shadows and smoke and mirrors (V18 on).

As usual, YMMV...

Richard

Windows 7 will have 6 different editions. The Starter Edition, for those $400 notebooks, will be limited to three applications at one time. Considering that 25% of the computers being sold are notebooks, That sucks royally, IMHO.

In this case, it not "free as in beer", but "Free as in Speech" in that Linux does not purposely cripple your computer.

It may depend on what you are trying to do with Linux (or Windows).

I am typing this from a Linux laptop.

I run Linux at home and we are switching to Linux at work for certain applications (all application backend stuff and some computer programmers). The more we switch, the more other things that run under Windows look like they could be a candidate for switching. We went from using about 100 Windows servers to run our apps, to just over 30 Linux server, because we could load up Linux quite a bit more. It is a stronger platform.

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

What works well under Linux is OS reliability, document editing, web browsing, databases, all server stuff, networking, and, lately I would say media playing. Linux is also extremely friendly to automation of common tasks via scripts (such as automated backups and a myriad of other things). It is also a very strong platform for servers.

Where it is not so strong is "specialized applications" like those drag and drop specialized programs like accounting, CAD etc. BRLCAD is a good example, everything that I have seen about it suggests that it is very powerful (I tried it) but it is not easy to get started with. My feeling is that if I had to use it ona professional basis, it would be actually very fine after a steep learning curve.

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of "apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation, and lower performance.

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their priorities.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you want. This is a low stress approach.

I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents now also.

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