Re: Open Source alternative for Autocad 2004 DFX File Editing,...

I do won't what ?

I really wish you wouldn't cross post this stuff cliff but to answer the mans question-

if he is familiar with open source he probably knows Blender

Of late Blender has much improved DXF import via script including some 3d and also has DXF export

I am not sure what he wants to do with the DXF but he might find this soln useful - of course Blender is not a CAD program and he shouldn't expect to find AutoCAD type tools to work with inside it.

He can find an on going BlenderArtists forum thread about the script development here

to AutoCAD 2007 is supported

There are some users of Blender with architectural interests so he may find some assistance to further questions about the usefulness of Blender for the DXF work he has in mind at the forum as well

The Blender Artists community is very friendly and helpful and has participants from all over the globe

Blender runs on Windows, Linux, Mac and some other platforms

Blender has a very active and open development community that I am sure would welcome even more contributors

HTH

You could also consider to install DWGGateway

in your current Autocad installation. This plugin enables you to read and write newer Acad files. So you can read even Acad2007 files into Acad R14 (or 2000, 2002 etc.)

Willem

Willem:

Now that seems odd. It's my understanding that part of the "cash cow" in the CAD/CAM world is paying yearly maintenance to get the latest "updates", which often make the files unreadable by prior versions of the software. Hence, to read files made by the latest versions you have to keep your maintenance current.

Now here we have SolidWorks Corp. (who seems to sponsor and support this DWGgateway site: "Free AutoCAD® converter from SolidWorks" Corporation), to be used by their competitor's customers to circumvent the NEED for them to stay current with their maintenance just so they can read the latest files.

I wonder if SolidWorks Corp. would appreciate it if AutoCAD created some translation software that allowed older versions of SolidWorks to read the latest files, and gave it away FREE so that SolidWorks' customers wouldn't have to pay yearly maintenance fees to remain current to be able to read the latest files.

Or is there something going on here that I'm not aware of, or not taking into consideration.

Yea, its a catch 22.. if you want the latest features, bug fixes, and newest toys, you have to pay the maintenance.. if you don't want to do this, then I suggest waiting till the end of the year, purchase solidworks 2k8 when they have SP5.0 out, then your good to go.

as for older releases not being able to read new files, you get that because of all the new features they add from version to version. and to keep support from one version to the next, if you think its buggy now, could you imagine? Now say your on 2k7 and I'm on 2k8 and you wanted a solid model.. I could save as a dumb solid and you would be able to interperate the model that way.. you wont have the feature tree tho..

Thats one good thing about edrawings, they have a plugin for all cad platforms out there.

other way SolidWorks could do it is up the price 3-5 times over, to pay for the support group (eg. coders, testers, etc..) and have a stable version, hopefully with no service packs needed. but then how many ppl would actually purchase it?

I think for what SW is, its a great tool, at a decent price, even with the maintenance.. It makes my life a helluva lot easier now that I dont have to draw everything in a 2.5d cad environment. and say I have to change something on a part, couple clicks and I'm done, in 2.5d, I could spend hours trying to fix, or just re-drawing it.. and hell, who likes to stare at a wireframe day in and day out.. I know my eyes start to bug out..