lithgow-schmidt.dk

What's the status of CAD on linux? How can you import and export your CAD drawings to your Linux computer?

Here's my story so far... I'm a keen user of Linux, Ubuntu since it came on the scene. I'm also trained as an architect and building technician. So good quality CAD application for the AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) industries is important to me. So here's what I've found and in some cases been involved in:

• Wikipedia now has a Comparison of CAD editors for AEC Please help me keep that list useful if you can.
  
• It looks like the BRL-CAD geometric modeling kernel is something which other apps could build on.

There are heaps of Linux-CAD project which are hardly started or not yet out of beta:

• SagCAD hasn't seen an update since November 2007. Although the interface looks quite comprehensive I couldn't get it to run last time I tried

Some opensource CAD packages are pretty good for most uses, those I've played with are

• PythonCAD has become active after a pause, they've even started work adding DWG support from the libreDWG project.

As for commercial CAD applications on Linux the options are somewhat better.

• A variety of IntelliCAD based applications run on Linux
  • VariCAD runs well on my Ubuntu machine
  • BricsCAD is said to run well (not for me) and it a good AutoCAD clone

Useful lists:

• http://linuxwiki.de/LinuxCad
• List of open source and free alternatives to AutoCAD

Anyway, I'll just keep using this page to keep my findings and notes on.

 Duncan