Laptop CAD?

autocad 14

Tom,

If it's just for ideas and not production CAD then the free version of Sketchup might do the trick:

Chris

Once you use Solidworks, Autocad looks like MS Paint with a flakey mouse.

According to Tom Gardner :

For which OS? I'm in communication with a fellow writing a CAD program patterned after TurboCAD -- but it is for linux -- or any other unix system. I'm helping him by testing it on Sun's Solaris and OpenBSD, and also suggesting improvements.

It is already to the point where I used it to design a simple project a week ago.

One of the benefits of it is that it does not lock you into a particular drawing size -- if your project expands out one side of the drawing -- the final printout will show up in the right scale to fit your paper.

It produces output in PostScript format -- but another free unix program can covert postscript to PDF (really great for e-mail to others) -- and you can probably find a conversion from PostScript to JPEG if you really want it -- but JPEG is a bad choice for line drawings. Better to go to two-color GIF -- or even to TIFF -- so you don't get the blurring of lines intersecting at small angles that JPEG gives when you zoom in for details.

The price is (and will remain) free.

I haven't yet tried it on a laptop, but it should work well enough -- and if you want better control, you can plug a mouse or a trackball into the laptop.

Enjoy, DoN.

Ive heard em called a Pearl and a Little man in the boat..and a love button..but never a mouse.

Gunner

Political Correctness

A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

When its ready..Id love to have a copy.

Gunner

Political Correctness

A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

There are a number of decent quality free Linux CAD programs, but any specifics about what you are attempting to design might help. If you are literally just trying to make drawings, maybe an SVG illustrator like inkscape is more what you're looking for. You may also want to try BlenderCAD, its made for 3d modelling and I haven't heard much about it, but I have a friend who swears by it- take from that what you will. QCAD looks like a nice piece of software; the community edition is free, although it seems to lack the scripting features of the commercial version- doesn't seem like a big loss for what you're talking about. I'm getting it off of portage right now, but will probably not be able to tell you about the whole JPEG thing until later this week, as I'm somewhat pressed for time. GCC

As you are using SoldidWorks, you'll kick all that 2D-crap from your hard disk after 15 minutes of trying out. Get some paper, a pen and scribble down your ideas. Much more creative, much better and faster flow brain->drawing.

Nick

Once you understand the difference between AutoCAD and Solidworks, comparisons of the two are really, really flakey.

To address the actual topic, we need to know if you want a 2D or 3d package. Don't do 3D unless you will gain something substantial from it

- 2D is much easier to learn and get results in a reasonable amount of learning time.

Dave

I haven't used AutoCAD for many years...since I started using Solidworks. Yes, they are apples and oranges. I don't need the potential of either. I just do simple machine parts and assemblies. I have a desktop in my home office with SW but I just want a simple 2D for my laptop for when the mood strikes my while there's a commercial on TV. I don't think my laptop will run SW very well and I think it'll be clunky with the touchpad.

I do have a Linux box at work to play with but the laptop is XP. I'm trying to avoid adding controls or I could just walk across the room to a desktop. Yea, I know...the height of laziness!

I never even thought of that...how barbaric! (But, I do believe you're right.) I'm almost paperless at work, I even sign checks with a stamp. I use whiteboards a lot, they are scattered throughout the plant.

Yes, if you want, it's barbaric. I'd call it intuitive.

Try to make a sketch of that last part you milled. It just has to show functionality. Now repeat that in $CAD. That should convince you. But I'm not an evangelist.

:-))

Whiteboards!? Not-so-barbaric. ;-) But you can use them instead of paper. Quite a few people do design _standing_. It's kinda like walking when you think about something complicated.

Nick

I'm ashamed to say that I do all my drawings in Visio. It still works, even after Micro$oft bought them out. It's ok for simple-minded 2d drawings and can cope with dimensions etc. Even has things like templates for bearings and so-on

I use it for mechanical drawings, architectural plans and even logic diagrams. I really need to get a life :-(

Mark Rand RTFM

Older versions of TurboCad (not the latest and greatest) can be picked up on ebay for $15 or so. Don't know if it's simple enough for you, but it's cheap.

TurboCad - often has the prior version on the web for free.

Comes with a library that might be handy - or roll your own.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal. NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.

Tom Gardner wrote:

Nothing wrong with Visio, it is a complex cad really.

I did many an IC proposal in it - fast and everyone had it in Marketing - so they could tweak...

Now my wide draws gardens using it - has the libs... "OO" 'oh oh' libs as well....

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal. NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.

Mark Rand wrote:

O.K. I'll ask on next exchange of e-mail whether I can pass on the download URL. He is working on version 0.6 at the moment, and I'm using 0.5. The upgrades with 0.6 are a bit ambitious, so I'm not sure how quick that one will be.

And if you're able to feed back reports of trying to use it, and what you would like changed -- I'm sure that he will be happy.

You will have to compile it, of course. But we've been working on a Makefile which will work with a variety of systems, and he is developing and compiling on linux anyway, so it should be easy enough. For Solaris (a 64-bit OS) I had to feed back some error messages and output from gdb (GNU Debugger) before we tracked down some of the things which were making it unhappy with a 64-bit OS.

I probably *should* have e-mailed this -- but both of us have rather active anti-spam approaches, so I figured that this would be a bit more reliable for a first round. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.