[lazyweb] CAD programs for Linux?

[trochee]

well, not so lazy -- I've done a fair amount of googling, but there is much linux power and knowledge among my F-list.

I'm toying with CAD programs for Linux, partially to avoid other work and partially because I'm curious, and I'm looking to move into a new apartment. It would be pretty neat to be able to lay out the floor plan and have a digital model of it. (useful, maybe not. but neat!)

any suggestions? Inkscape seems too low-level -- extremely powerful, but not an architecture tool. QCaD seems promising, but I haven't tried it out (it also may be headed to closed-source). Am I missing any other major contenders?

Comments

other possible choices

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dkg_/]

i don't have much experience with this field, but a bit of digging turned up

• PythonCAD, and
  
• varkon
  

i haven't used either of them, though. and QCad (which i also haven't used) looks as slick as either one, if not slicker. What makes you say that QCaD is heading to closed source? it appears to be in debian main.

PythonCAD has the advantage (out of the 3 packages) of being in debian testing, but it might be a bit too low-level as well. after futzing around with it for 5 minutes, i couldn't decipher it for the purpose of drawing a floor layout.

frankly, i find inkscape rewarding enough that i'd lean towards that (assuming you only want 2D), even though it's not as specific a tool as the others for your purpose. But maybe that's because i've already invested a bunch of time in figuring out that tool. Can you be more specific about how you'd like to use a CAD program? are you hoping to document the layout of an apartment in the 5 minutes you see the place on an interview/visit?

i've done some smaller layouts in inkscape before, but nothing really fancy. i like that you can edit the properties of the objects directly in the XML editor, though. good for tweaking things to be the length you expect them to be exactly.

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

Hi Daniel ! ;)

Don't want to burst your bubble, J < because well you are smart with programs, but CAD is very difficult to learn and use. Theater set designers spent entire semesters learning it !

Do we really need that to design our new apartment ?

[trochee.livejournal.com]

i played with qcad for about 15 minutes, and while I think I could learn it, I had a much easier -- and more satisfying -- time with graph paper and a pen.

So this might have to wait for some other project.

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

I have to back up the 'boo on this one. CAD is like any other art: you spend the first six months succeeding at sad things and getting frustrated with significant things. A large part of my first year of high school was spent in the Technical Drawing Lab learning the basics of AutoCAD. Let me simply say: the free/Free CAD software pretty universally sucks. I (ab)use dia when i really need digital technical drawings.

For room layout, though, i like my handy tape measure, some graph paper, a pen, and scissors. I cut out little pieces of furniture and draw little rooms, then place the furniture in the rooms. Oh, and don't forget to mark windows and doors (and their arcs!). It's like the ueber-dork's way to play house.

Only when viewed this way will one typically notice that my bookshelf, end table, and couch form tangent lines along an exponential curve. If i were more compulsive, i would've actually computed the rise/run off the wall to angle things, but i'm not. I haven't yet decided if this is a good or bad thing.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

hee hee. I'm very close to that. I will post a .jpg of my graph-paper-pen-and-pencil plot of our apartment.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

see here.

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

Wow. Somebody said I was right and I almost missed it ?!!!

The graph is great.

:)