autocad
 

is there a linux equivalent for autocad

Depends on your needs. There's qcad http://www.qcad.org/ which might do it for you. It does 2D, and reads and writes DXF's.

There's PythonCAD. I know much less about this one http://www.pythoncad.org/ .

Catia is an AutoCAD competitor which does not officially support Linux, but some have gotten it to work.

And finally, people have made AutoCAD itsself work on linux via WINE http://www.winehq.org , but this could potentially be a lot of work.

Google "autocad linux"-----889,000 hits

(Yes many of these are redundant....;))

I have the sense that we are getting close to "big name" programs like this getting native Linux ports---but then I've had that feeling before.