[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.