Open source alternative to ArchiCAD for ubuntu 8.10 x64

[Ray Parrish]

kmadananteshwar.vbhat at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi karl .. Thanx 4 the advice but I wasn't referring to auto cad and what I really meant was that I wanted to know weather or not there are any open source 3D/2D CAD/Building Information Modeling software available for Ubuntu and I said ARCHICAD not AUTOCAD   
> Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel
>   
Hello,

I'm a draftsman, or was... before I got put on disability,, and I have 
QCad, and SaGcad installed on Ubuntu so far. Qcad seems to be a fairly 
usable CAD program, with many nice features, including layers, and 
dimensioning tools, but it is only 2D in nature.

SaGcad on the other hand doesn't seem as polished, in that it has no 
menus at all, just toolbar buttons, and seemingly no way to enable any 
menus. I also could not find a basic line drawing tool when I went 
through all of it's buttons. It's from Japan, and even has some Japanese 
lettering wthin it's interface.

I haven't examined the file types they output yet, so i'm not sure if 
they are compatible with anything else in that respect. I also have 
Inkscape Vector Graphics Editor installed, and it is a bit too 
complicated for my tastes. I'm not sure what a person would draw with 
it, and have only looked at it briefly, before giving up on creating 
anything wiht it, as I was looking for a normal CAD program at that 
point, not a high end graphics editor.

All of those are available in the Ubuntu repositories via the Synaptic 
Package Manager. There is also Blender which is a 3D modeler / renderer 
according to it's menu entry. There is also Pythoncad, which seems like 
a fair 2D drafting program. It has no grid option, but does have 
dimensioning, several types of line drawing tools, the ability to 
specify your basic measurement units in either British or American 
units, and layers as well.

I accidentally opened two windows with it, and then tried to changes the 
preferences, with the result that when I attempted to save the 
preferences, I got a "Pythoncad has crashed" message box, but both 
Pythoncad windows kept running until I closed one of them manually.

I've just spent quite a bit of time investigating Open office Draw, and 
it seems that it could be used as a quite good 2D drawing creator. It 
does include 3D object insertion, has grids, many, many, drawing tool 
types, paper size selection, dimensioning, and just about anything else 
you would need to create professional drawings.

There well may be other packages available as well, but I haven't 
searched the repositories as much as I could have yet.

Later, Ray Parrish

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