Playing with FreeCAD: Trapezoids and Ribs

FreeCAD is an application  whose development I have been watching closely since I first learned about it. What I like on FreeCAD?

• It is Free and Open Source Software.
• It's a feature-based parametric solid modeler. I actually believe that this kind of modeling is the best way to create complex 3D entities.
• FreeCAD has its own workflow without trying to mimic the way that other similar applications work.

FreeCAD is under active development and currently is on Alpha stage(FreeCAD's development team decided recently to remove the "Alpha" status from FreeCAD).
But despite the missing features it can create complex geometry thanks to its Sketcher which is a very good tool.

Is this how Bricscad's rendering mode will look like on Linux?

Bricscad V12 for Linux will have a lot of new cool features. One of them is a realistic rendering mode for 3d modeling. This feature isn't implemented yet but thanks to a... bug we can have a possible preview about how this feature will look like.

Bricscad's realistic rendering mode or not?

QCAD 3 RC1 released!

QCAD 3 RC 1 released for downloading and testing. This version has many bug fixes and improvements and it's one step before the final release. QCAD 3 tries to combine dwg compatibility without changing  the familiar QCAD interface. You can download it from here and you can read more about this version here.

QCAD 3 RC1 on Debian Wheezy 64bit

DraftSight and Ubuntu 11.10 64bit

Ubuntu 11.10 has multiarch support. This is a feature that makes the installation of 32bit applications on a 64bit OS easier. Well that doesn't work with DraftSight. The package failed to be installed correctly in every possible workaround I tried. DraftSight installed and worked after some tricks but it was marked as damaged so it had to be removed. (You are unable to update your system or install new programs if you have damaged packages).

So the only way to install and  run DS on a 64bit Ubuntu 11.10 is to completely ignore dpkg.
How to do that? Here are the necessary steps.

• Install the necessary dependencies of DraftSight: sudo apt-get install libdirectfb-extra sendmail
• Install this library from Natty.
• Extract the contents of DraftSight.deb. For your ease put Draftsight.deb file inside your home folder.Then right click on the DraftSight.deb and select "Extract here"
• Open nautilus as root ( Press Alt+F2, type gksu nautilus, press Enter, insert you password and press Enter again)
• Copy the contents of ~/DraftSight/var and ~/DraftSight/opt into you system's /var and /opt folders
• Open a terminal and type: cd ~/DraftSight/DEBIAN  then type sudo ./preinst and  sudo ./postinst

Now you are able to work with DraftSight on your 64bit Ubuntu without any dpkg problems.

 I don't like workarounds like this but unfortunately it is the only way to install DraftSight on a 64bit Ubuntu 11.10 system.

Important Update: This workaround is for DraftSight V1R1.3

The newer V1R1.4 version doesn't need any more the library from Natty and probably sendmail. Also the path to DraftSight's startup script has been changed to /opt/dassault-systemes/draftsight/bin/draftsight

DraftSight on Ubuntu 11.10

After finishing a clean installation of Ubuntu 11.10 I experienced a problem on the installation of DraftSight but finally I solved it easily.

A very quick view on Bricscad for Linux V12 beta

Today Bricsys announced some very impressive new features for Bricscad V12 and I was really very curious about these changes. So I found and downloaded the beta version of Bricscad V12 for Linux.

Gear design with Linux

Gear design is painful. The design of the involute curve is a demanding process. However there are some utilities that can make this easier.