It there anything like AUTOCAD in linux? I'll be in an autocad module in College, but they download a copy every 21 days because it expires :-/. I'm hoping for something similar in linux, without the PITA of such a regular reinstall.

Hi,

Have a look at Archimedes. Although it's pretty recent they aim to be the AutoCAD alternative.

Kind regards,

Eric

Hi...

Try Bricscad, there is a native Linux port

or try Bricscad for W$, or ZWCad, or ProgeCAD, all these are W$ programs which have the

Gold/Platinum rating in WineHQ, i.e. : They run flawlessly within the loader syscalls

generated by wine inside a Linux environment.

Catia also runs flawlessly in wine, although there is a Unix port for Solaris.

BricsCad, ZWCad and ProgeCAD are all based in the IntelliCAD source code, proprietary, that

mimics AutoCAD interface, file format export and import capability dwg, dxf, and ACIS *sat

from AutoCAD R10 till AutoCAD 2010.

The only Native Linux port is BricsCAD... but the compatible distros are limited ( like for

any proprietary software ) so if you plan to run BricsCAD on Arch Linux, or Crux Linux, be

ready to enable multilib layer, build some libraries for 32 bits arch ( BricsCAD is not 64

bits ), install them to some custom place, and update your LD_LIBRARY_PATH everytime you

wish to run BricsCAD.


EDIT And there's VariCAD, which is proprietary, Linux native, and exists in 64 bits, and BRL CAD, which is Free OpenSource, but these two are not properly called "AutoCAD look alike" clones ...

Archimedes seems to be for Architects ATM - They got that bit first.

Qcad I know a little as a sound 2D modelling thing.

Brl-Cad (Not a clone)Seems to be the business - offers Ray-tracing, etc and does 3d. I shudder at the learning curve. When you have it installed it knows more about you than you do about it :-/.
Briscad costs money! So does ZWCad, and ProgeCad. $300+ :-((. I get 30 day trials there. Briscad is also available for linux now.
I'll be in College as an Electronics head. At a guess, they'll be teaching a subset of autocad's actual abilities. So I'll probably get a feel for what they are up to, and then try to replace it.

Then I answered my own question to a point. Slashdot featured CAE Linux, and I eventually remembered it. I had burned a DVD. Current edition is 64 bit only. Seems like I should pull it out and find a spare partition for it :-D.

Sorry for trouble, and thanks

Hi,

No trouble at all, glad you got some things sorted out. Hopefully one of the programs pointed to will do what you need in college.

Kind regards,

Eric

Thanks for the help. CAELinux is 64 bit only. Ubuntu with extras. So I got me /boot partition cleaned of all kernels, etc and have to restore from a (thankfully recent) backup.

The user in caelinus, btw is caelinux and there doesn't seem to be a password. I had to grok /etc/group to find that out ! :-/.