2d Drafting Software Open Source

broken image


Forum
Blog
GitHub
SourceForge

Open Source CAD Software. Top 5 Best Free 3D CAD Software for Windows. By Ramesh Natarajan on July 17, 2013. ActCAD is a 2D Drafting and 3D Modeling CAD software meant for Engineers, Architects and other technical consultants. ActCAD is a native DWG & DXF CAD software to create and edit drawings. ActCAD uses IntelliCAD engine, Open Design Alliance DWG/DXF Libraries, ACIS 3D Modeling Kernel and many other Technologies.

Open Source 2D-CAD

LibreCAD is a free Open Source CAD application for Windows, Apple and Linux. Support and documentation are free from our large, dedicated community of users, contributors and developers.

You, too, can also get involved!

How it started

LibreCAD started as a project to build CAM capabilities into the community version of QCad for use with a Mechmate CNC router.

Since QCad CE was built around the outdated Qt3 library, it had to be ported to Qt4 before additional enhancements. This gave rise to CADuntu.

The project was known as CADuntu only for a couple of months before the community decided that the name was inappropriate. After some discussion within the community and research on existing names, CADuntu was renamed to LibreCAD.

Porting the rendering engine to Qt4 proved to be a large task, so LibreCAD initially still depended on the Qt3 support library. The Qt4 porting was completed eventually during the development of 2.0.0 series, thanks to our master developer Rallaz, and LibreCAD has become Qt3 free except in the 1.0.0 series.

Meanwhile, for LibreCAD 2.2.0 series, Qt5 is mandatory.

LibreCAD is a feature-packed and mature 2D-CAD application with some really great advantages:

Completely and Utterly Free

No worries about trials, subscriptions, license costs or annual fees.

Open Source and GPLv2

Developed by an experienced team and supported by an awesome community, LibreCAD is also free to hack and copy.

No Language Barriers

It's available in over 30 languages with cross-platform support for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

macOS


Help is needed for macOS deployment.

from SourceForge
Find latest stable DMG packages there.

from GitHub
Find latest stable DMG packages there.

Windows

from SourceForge
Find latest stable EXE installer there.
Also automated nightly build installer for bleeding-edge versions.

2d drafting software open source d encaissement

from GitHub
Find latest stable EXE installer there.
Also special prerelease installer for beta testing versions.

Linux

online, free 2d Drafting Software

Check your distributions preferred package manager, if LibreCAD is available there. But the version may be a bit older.
For Debian/Ubuntu distributions, you can use our Launchpad PPAs for stable or daily versions.

Build from source

This is an option for all platforms.

If we don't have the binary installer you are looking for, you can try to build LibreCAD from source code.
How this works for each platform can be read in our Wiki .

Source code could be downloaded from GitHub as ZIP archive.

Or you can clone or fork our repository, which is recommended if you plan to contribute.

2d Drafting Software Open Source Download

The LibreCAD team is a small group of dedicated people. Lots of things have been worked out, but plenty of bugs and features are still waiting to be solved. How can you help? We need all the skills in the community as coders, writers, testers or translators.

An open source community is a dynamic thing; people come and go as their private situation drives or stops them contributing. So, it will always help if you have existing resources we can use, know what other projects do in specific areas, or, most importantly, do what you do best and have fun doing it!
You don't have to sign a lifetime contract to contribute. Whether you can help others in the forum, garden the wiki, or apply one or many patches, our broad user base will appreciate your work.

Come join our community, and contribute in any way you like.

Developing

If you are an outstanding developer in C++ or a beginner we can use your help.
With a bit of determination, the IRC channel, Zulip chat and the Libre-CAD-dev mailing list, we can help you get started and make progress.
All you need is linked in download section and top links above.

Documentation

Developers usually make bad documentation for users, so if you like making documentation, great!
There have been extensive GUI changes in 2.1 series which need to be documented.

Translation

Help localize LibreCAD, we currently support over 30 languages.
Our translation server is over here: https://translate.librecad.org/ .
You can complete new languages, or request creating translations for a new language in the forum .

As a non-profit, community driven open source project LibreCAD is dependent on having good relationships with friends and sponsors.

Friends

BRL-CAD

BRL-CAD is a powerful open source cross-platform solid modelling system that includes interactive geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing for rendering and geometric analysis, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, geometry libraries for application developers, and more than 30 years of active development.

BRL-CAD and LibreCAD collaborate in Google programs. We participate under the umbrella of BRL-CAD in Google Code-in and Google Summer of Code where we mentor school pupils and students in participating in open source projects.

Sponsors

JetBrains

JetBrains has generously supplied us with CLion licenses for the development of LibreCAD. This powerful IDE helps you develop in C and C++ on Linux, OS X and Windows, enhancing your productivity with a smart editor, code quality assurance, automated refactoring, and deep integration with CMake build system.

Free 2D CAD Solutions

I read an article today in Desktop Engineering on 'Wallet-friendly 2D CAD'. It addition to a couple of of low cost programs, they mentioned a couple of free ones. I decided to give them both a try and write a quick blog post about them. My father upgraded his computer recently. He was using AutoCAD LT97 for years and wanted to upgrade rather than reinstalling the old software. He was shocked to learn that the current price is about $1200. A lower price alternative is needed!

DraftSight

DraftSight from Dassault Systèmes is a completely free 2D CAD program. Dassault Systemes makes a lot of high end CAD systems like Catia. I am not sure what they are trying to accomplish with this. It appears that they are trying to create a community of users that they might be able to upgrade in the future. The file was a reasonable download of about 42Meg. There were no registration questions (but they will come). I really liked the general drawing features. It always seemed to know what you wanted to snap to and there were quick ways to override the defaults. The interface is very clean. You can also manually type commands in. I felt right at home with my AutoCAD background. I really liked the fact that you can choose you file format and revision and stick with it. Many times I need a DXF and I want to make quick changes to it. AutoCAD is alway nagging you to go to the DWG format.

DraftSight

DoubleCAD XT v2

DoubleCAD XT V2 is from IMSI/Design. This was a big 152 Meg down load. There were a lot of advanced registration questions to get an emailed link. When you start drawing, a lot goes on. A lot of nice little boxes pop up asking dimensions and angles. It was quite quick to draw the shapes you wanted. The snapping was a little hard to figure out. I wanted to draw a line tangent to two circles and it took me a long time to figure it out. I am sure it is very nice and fast once you figure it all out, but the learning curve does look a little high.

QCAD

QCAD was not mentioned in the article but it fits the category. QCAD is a program from Ribbon Soft. A lot of the open source community uses this program. There is an GPL open source community version of the program. It has all the basic features you need, but the interface is a little dated and a lot less of the fancy of the other programs. I have used it before, so I did not download it for this review.

QCAD

Conclusions

Cad Software

If I had to rate the 2D programs I think I would put them in this order.

2d Drafting Software Open Source Adalah

  1. DraftSight
  2. DoubleCAD XT V2
  3. QCAD.




broken image