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The BRL-CAD project defines two levels of tasks geared towards new contributors. "Deuces" are small tasks expected to take less than 2 hours. "Quickies" take around 2 days:

http://brlcad.org/wiki/Deuces
http://brlcad.org/wiki/Quickies

The project even provides a virtual machine disk image that has everything set up and ready to go.

The BRL-CAD project defines two levels of tasks geared towards new contributors. "Deuces" are small tasks expected to take less than 2 hours. "Quickies" take around 2 days:

http://brlcad.org/wiki/Deuces
http://brlcad.org/wiki/Quickies

The project even provides a virtual machine disk image that has everything set up and ready to go.

For a CNC machine, you probably want more of a 3D modeling system, namely something more on the lines of BRL-CAD. There is lot of documentation out there for BRL-CAD as it's been around for awhile. FreeCAD is more for drawings, but still a good program.

Wow, talk about a blatant slashvertisement. As the summary states, it's not at all unusual for CAD/CAM software to ally with hardware so what exactly is the news for nerds here??

With more contributors working on improving BRL-CAD's usability and features, we'd have an open source alternative without the huge recurring price tag. Lots of ways to get involved are listed here: http://brlcad.org/wiki/Contributor_Quickies

You see what I did there.

I think one of the most impressive us military contributions to open source is actually BRL CAD. It's pretty awesome, in an emacsy kind of way, though for solid modelling rather than text.

BRL-CAD is a great project with an extensive legacy that doesn't get nearly enough developer attention. With hundreds of staff years effort invested across tons of functionality, it's really the *only* open source CAD system viable for production use, yet it's still in need of devs to help improve the interface and usability.

You'd think the massive market size of the CAD/CAM industry (estimated around $8B annual) would help, but that really just attracts LOTS of users. Thousands a month. Many understandably get put off by the steep learning curve and UNIX-style design or cry for features implemented in their favorite commercial CAD system that took loads of manpower.

The project is crazy active with the dozen or so devs that already do contribute, but the open source developer community at large doesn't seem to know about the project. Some are probably put off by the size of BRL-CAD (1M+ loc), but that's actually rather tiny for a production CAD system. The project deficiencies are well known (usability, interface!), but takes lots time and effort to make things better. Takers?

You're an applied mathematics student, so look for applied math projects. That way, you're newbie skills will be best put to use leveraging what you already know. There'll still be plenty you'll have to learn along the way, so put what you know to good use. Instead of projects like boost, sage, or octave, look for projects that have heavy applied math requirements like BRL-CAD, Blender, CGAL, and many many others.

Pick a community that interests you. Download the source code, compile and run the software, find their bug list, start fixing bugs. Introduce yourself when you have something useful to contribute (not just vaporware) or if you get stuck and need help.

Plenty of math-specific projects at http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Math/Software/ too.

So, anybody help you find anything yet?

I only know of BRL-CAD that would be suitable for defining geometry that you could actually fabricate (as opposed to geometry for pretty pictures).

http://brlcad.org/

It has hit /. before http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/08/1823248

A Couple of others have already mentioned it, but take a look at BRL-CAD.

It's pretty much the standard. It originated as a US Government backed project and was later open sourced. This is a VERY mature piece of software, unfortunately with a steep learning curve.

Red

BRL-CAD is probably the only full fledged package. Link:

http://brlcad.org/

BRL-CAD is almost what you describe. They have just announced a summer of code project to add parametric support, so give it a few months and it will be a "open source 3D parametric CAD/CAM application for Linux".

BRL-CAD is almost what you describe. They have just announced a summer of code project to add parametric support, so give it a few months and it will be a "open source 3D parametric CAD/CAM application for Linux".

I'm certainly biased, but it's more than awesome in theory. The project has a lot of momentum and development going on not only towards addressing your concerns, but a lot of others as well. Most everything being worked on now is towards making the GUI much better.

That includes dropping Tk for the modeler (going to Qt now that it's LGPL). That includes implementing full BREP/NURBS support and multiple-representation geometry (no longer just unevaluated wireframes until render). That includes a fresh implementation of an OO geometry engine ala ACIS and Granite. That includes an extensible plug-in based application framework and a whole lot more.

BRL-CAD's main issues are 'cosmetic' problems that you don't even have to be a developer to help (vastly) improve. Docs, website, tools... The biggest problem (aside from needing more developers) is one of scope and expectations as CAD means a lot of different things to different people. Commercial CAD is major business with more than 2000 devs cranking features into the likes of CATIA, AutoCAD, Solidworks, NX, and Pro/E on a daily basis. BRL-CAD has two orders of magnitude less yet nearly the same expectations from users. The only way it's going to improve is through increasing development from the open source community at large to make things better, leverage the 500 staff-years invested, and push forward making great tools.

BRL-CAD is about to cross 35,000 commits. Emacs has more than 85,000. GCC has about 12,000 unique over 150,000 commits.

That rounds out the three oldest continuously developed repositories with preserved revision history.

until I can use Solidworks on another OS I'm stuck with XP on my desktop.

I remember an engineer I used to work with used Solidworks. I am curious what he would think of BRL-CAD.

Get accepted into the Google Summer of Code!

It's becoming increasingly more competitive for organizations to become accepted as the program continues to evolve, but any established project with a vibrant user community has the potential to get accepted. Once accepted, Google basically provides an incentive for students to become involved with a project's development by seeding them with a summer stipend. It's a little more involved than that, but that's the gist.

This is the first year BRL-CAD gets to participate and I can already say it's looking to be a lot of fun. It forces a project to organize, coordinate, market, and communicate more. It's a lot of work but well worth it ... and very exciting to see the increase in developer interest!

http://brlcad.org/

Probably not a direct competitor, but it wouldn't be utterly shocking if there was functional overlap.

BRL-CAD is delighted to be participating in the Google Summer of Code this year for the first time. Be sure to check out our ideas list and either stop by the #brlcad IRC channel on Freenode or subscribe to our developer's mailing list to get involved early.

As many know, computer-aided design (CAD) is one of the areas most lacking attention in open source. BRL-CAD has a solid foundation and considerable 25-year development history with more than 450 person-years development effort invested yet we are still wholesomely lacking in the usability and user-interface department. Maybe some of you can help us fix that. We're interested in many other ideas as well. Hope to see you apply!

BRL-CAD is delighted to be participating in the Google Summer of Code this year for the first time. Be sure to check out our ideas list and either stop by the #brlcad IRC channel on Freenode or subscribe to our developer's mailing list to get involved early.

As many know, computer-aided design (CAD) is one of the areas most lacking attention in open source. BRL-CAD has a solid foundation and considerable 25-year development history with more than 450 person-years development effort invested yet we are still wholesomely lacking in the usability and user-interface department. Maybe some of you can help us fix that. We're interested in many other ideas as well. Hope to see you apply!

BRL-CAD is delighted to be participating in the Google Summer of Code this year for the first time. Be sure to check out our ideas list and either stop by the #brlcad IRC channel on Freenode or subscribe to our developer's mailing list to get involved early.

As many know, computer-aided design (CAD) is one of the areas most lacking attention in open source. BRL-CAD has a solid foundation and considerable 25-year development history with more than 450 person-years development effort invested yet we are still wholesomely lacking in the usability and user-interface department. Maybe some of you can help us fix that. We're interested in many other ideas as well. Hope to see you apply!

maybe they just need to look around and open their eyes.
there are lots of projects. for example, http://brlcad.org/

You can doubt all you want, but both varkon and opencascade are used for some high-end stuff, as a cursory glance at screenshots would show.

Varkon is better than most CAD packages in the way that LaTeX is better than Microsoft Word for professional document layout. Though again, varkon in particular probably doesn't work like other cad packages you're used to, being pervasively parametric. But don't mistake that for being "worse" than other cad packages - it's often much better if you're doing serious stuff.

Other CAD: BRL-CAD is still somewhat specialised towards military electromagnetic applications, but is a very nice CSG modeller.

BRL-CAD?

http://www.brlcad.org/

There is at least one OSI-approved free license that is based on contract law instead of upon copyright law: the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA). The terms in the agreement do not require copyright (though that certainly strengthens the agreement enforceability) since the U.S. Government cannot claim copyright on original works within the U.S. per U.S. law, though they can be claimed internationally. Copyright in the U.S. can generally only be acquired through copyright assignment (e.g., from a contractor) so having an Open Source agreement that does not rely upon copyright is crucial for many government-owned codes.

The NOSA was tentatively considered for BRL-CAD and was the prevailing option for a while, though BRL-CAD ultimately ended up under the LGPL and BSD license (each for different parts of the package). That consideration was entirely due to copyright issues with the (large) codebase, though copyright was ultimately acquired (through assignment) allowing for the adoption of more familiar Open Source licenses.

I have installed Ubuntu onto about 6 PC's now. Each time I hand it over to the person & never get another call back. My worst case was with a Compaq desktop (PII 500 IIRC), I couldn't get the integrated soundcard to work. When I looked it up, seems it's a proprietary chip & not even WinME supported it. Oh well, in went the $5 Soundblaster & off went the PC. For people who only want to do simple Web browsing, E-mail, and word processing, Ubuntu should be the prefered OS, much lighter than Windows, better security, and it works well on old, cheap hardware. Let's face it, a P IV 3K+ chip is great, but it really only takes a pII 500 to run 90+% of the web - excluding of course video in WM formats. Email could be done just as well on a P I as a P IV, once you cut out all the bloat in Email programs.
Next, as far as administrating the box goes, how many people really do any administration beyond clicking the install updates now button? 90% of the people I know do auto updates for Windows & when something goes wrong they show up at my door & cry. From what I hear from other people who are techs, it's about the same everywhere. People don't know how to 'administer' a computer, and they don't want to know. Ubuntu & Fedora use yum, Debien uses apt, between the 2 I don't think I have had to manually compile a program for any generic use. Last one I compiled was the BRL-CAD system I wanted to play with. Not exactly something that's high enough demand to get packaged for a repository. I've had to install & configure autocad on systems also - it wasn't any harder to do the compile.
Last note, what documentation have you been reading in the proprietary software world that's much better? The booklet that came with the HP I was working on this week was a font of usefull information telling me that everything is golden out of the box & call this number if it wasn't. Supposedly there's documentation in MS software, but I've never found it to be usefull if it wasn't just pointing me to which menu selection to use to do something - Excel seems to be the exception there, but it didn't start as a MS product IIRC.

since you're in the industry and all...

You did notice I said I'm a student, right? ; )

Anyway, most of my (limited) experience has been with AutoCAD and SolidEdge, which are both expensive and Windows-only. I have done some research into the matter at times, though, but I don't think I'll be of much help.

First of all, if your needs really are simple, you could just use a drawing/diagramming tool like xFig, Dia, or Inkscape. Beyond that, though, all I can really suggest is QCad or possibly BRL-CAD, seeing as how those are about the only two Free* CAD apps for Linux that aren't already dead or "in planning" or whatever.

I also found this list, although I suspect it isn't of much help.

*I don't like QCad's license either, especially seeing as how the Free Software version is crippleware. I'm surprised nobody's forked it yet -- it needs it!

• CAE Linux - A LiveCD which lets you try out SALOME and Code-Aster
• Quanitan - A LiveCD with QCad,
• Impact - Finite element
• QCad - 2D CAD
• BRL-CAD - 3D CAD
• Open CASCADE - software development platform for 3D CAD, CAM, CAE, etc.
• Code_Aster - FEM
• Salome - pre/post processing

Gee that is helpful. Actually you can find alots of obscure niche software for Linux. GRASSGIS and AirfoilX are two good examples.
For CAD you may want to look at http://www.brlcad.org/
Good luck.

Haven't looked at this much, but I remember when someone was asking about the same sort of thing this link came up and looked fairly interesting. http://brlcad.org/

http://brlcad.org/
I don't know if it will export IGES but it might. If not Turbocad is pretty cheap.

Has anybody checked out the open source BRL-CAD before? Apparently its pretty mature, and the military uses it.

While not the most easy to use CAD package, you might want to check if BRL-CAD (http://www.brlcad.org/) can import your drawings correctly. It is GPL'd and has some sort of import
filters for Pro/E (no, I havent tried that capability). The program is certainly mature, but is largely focused on ballistics - but hey, that could come handy if you want to check how your plane would survive under anti-aircraft fire...

K.R

Where's the CAD/CAM software?

Well, aside from the 43 CAD packages (some free, some open source, some commercial) trivially accessible through freshmeat.net, there is also BRL-CAD, the recently open-sourced CAD software used by the Army Research Laboratory to model and upgrade the Abrams battletank, and other systems.

There is also CAM software available, CNCsr being one example, used for control of CNC (Computer Numeric Control) devices (lathes, mills, routers, plasma cutters, etc).

There are other, highly valid criticisms of this author's thesis, but the lack of engineering tools isn't one of them. The main source of Linux's strength, IMO, is that it is used by professionals (mainly engineers) to get real work done, and this use drives the direction of its development, and the development of the software running on the platform. In many cases, it is the same engineers using the software that develop the software. This naturally results in software which is highly suited to practical everyday (albeit specialized) use.

-- TTK

Some sort of non-gaming application that uses a graphics card. Having trouble thinking of one now, but I know they exist somewhere ;)

BRL-CAD is a very large scale project with over 20 years of history in RCS and CVS. The CVS repository now lives on SourceForge with pretty much the entire revision history preserved (the project only recently released as open source). You can see one of the oldest files, for example here (bool.c). If you look to the end of the file, you'll see something like: Wed Apr 18 02:19:43 1984 UTC (20 years, 9 months ago) by mike

Several years ago, many of the current CVS practices were written down and organized into a rather detailed generic CVS policy. It basically all boils down to being able to guarantee a certain level of functionality, being very careful about naming directories, and coming up with good tag naming conventions. Likewise, depending on how many developers you have and how active development is, more or less control may be required for branches and validation.

Those last two restrictions are mainly due to limitations of CVS -- it does not directly manage directories or maintain history of directory changes, so you're left up to tracking those changes by policy conventions. (It's rather annoying that a CVS checkout does not prune empty directories by default!) If your directory structure is likely to change frequently (e.g. a new large project starting up), then something like SVN may be less painful. that said, BRL-CAD's history has easily endured CVS's inadequacies quite successfully.

Yup, looks like it does. Those and a few others: import and export