AutoCAD alternatives

[Carroll Grigsby]

On Thursday 15 July 2004 09:52 am, Artur Sampaio wrote:
> Hi folks.
> Does anyone knows a *good* alternative to AutoCAD? Or if AutoCAD 2004
> runs under Linux?
>
> Thanks in advice.
>
> Artur Sampaio

Artur:

No, but all is not lost.

When I first retired three years ago, I spent some time looking at the 
possibility of doing CAD under Linux. My search was restricted to doing 3D 
design of mechanical devices and parts, so what follows may not be useful if 
you are engaged in some other area of technology:

1. AutoCad got married to Windows some time in the mid 90's, abandoning it's 
ties to pure MS-DOS and Unix versions. Wine? No. AFAIK, no one successfully 
run AutoCad using Wine, although there have been reports of successes with 
AutoCad Lite.

2. If your requirements only require 2D drafting capability, QCad may be 
viable alternative based upon my own brief experience with it. However, if 
your users are long time AutoCad jockeys, expect strong resistance.

3. Varicad (http://www.varicad.com/index.phtml) strikes me as an excellent 
alternative for mechanical engineering development, design and drafting (my 
field). It isn't free ($300US? -- 30 day free trial), and it will take a 
while to learn, but my brief trial of it impressed me very much. I've also 
read that the developers are very responsive to user requests. However, it 
would not be useful in other disciplines. The AutoCad jockeys will not like 
it.

4. And now, some links (more available on request):
http://pfrostie.freeservers.com/cad-tastrafy/ -- survey of various linux cad 
applications with links to the product's home page. Warning: Some of the 
information may be dated.

http://www.freelists.org/webpage/cad-linux -- base page for mail list  related 
to linux cad apps -- (run by same guy as above) -- about 0.0016 as much 
actiity as this list. Check the archives.

http://www.eland.org.uk/pages/Misc/cadnotes.html -- interesting comments; 
worth a look. An especially hot site if you design bicyles. I don't.

-- cmg