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Here are some cad applications that works in Linux, two of them are commercial though. http://www.qcad.org/ http://varicad.com/ http://www.cycas.de/

I've used a program which runs on Linux called Cycas for quite a bit of scale floor plans, but have found the interface frustrating and as a result never dig into 3D much and rendering at all.

Has anyone used both? Is SketchUp useful at all for something like a detailed floorplan, or just for big primitive, blocky structures? Is it really so unbelievably easy to use that it's worth booting into XP?

TIA-

You are correct in that fully capable software is a long time off, but there has to be some short cut to a basic CAD for Linux. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but surely the market will soon support solutions derived from an existing renderer (Blender), 2D CAD (QCAD), existing 3D (Cycas, arcad, ICAADS, OpenCascade) or a CAD/CAM (VariCAD) before AutoDesk can turn their ship around. It doesn't even have to be OS/FS, although I would think a FS system could eventually take the market.

I know our engineers that do mechanical parts design do most of their work in ANSYS and Pro/E on Solaris. Pro/E definitely has a Linux edition available; I think there may be Linux versions of ANSYS available, though I'm not sure. I think Pro/E is aimed at solid modeling (I'm not an ME), so I can't tell you for sure whether its suitable for structural stuff.

Also, just a quick search turned up CYCAS, which looks promising from a quick view of the homepage. ICAADS might also be an option.

From what I can tell, it needs better examples of how to do the simple stuff. The last example I saw, went from makeing a sphere to making it move. I would like to see a good example of how to merge items together and make simple models.

I make models for POVray in cycas which is an architecture program but it works fine for many types of modles.

The rest of us are stuck using windows. Why?

Let's see:
Autocad: Windows Only
LON-Maker: Windows Only
ER/Studio and Describe: Windows Only
Some other important software: Windows Only.

You might try cycas to replace Autocad. The full version is commercial (which I have not used), but there's a hamstrung trial version you can download for free. The free version works great.

I don't know about Autocad file compatibility. The commercial versions can only import DFX-12 2D/3D files, so you may have some problems there if Autocad can't export DFX files. It doesn't look like Cycas can read DWG files.

I performed a quick search on Freshmeat for you. Here's the results (filtered for stuff that's actually relevant, I think). In no particular order:

CYCAS - not sure if it's open-source, but will run on Linux and BSD and looks pretty powerful

Jcad - written in Java, this is an open-sourced CAD which works with DXF file formats. Not the most powerful of tools out there, but it's a start

iCADis - can't tell much from the site, but it might be worth a try. Uses GTK and is covered by the GPL

OCTree - looks like it has a really innovative interface. Not sure about the license though.

Varicad - for mechanical engineering. Looks good, but unsure if it's open.

QCad - seems to be one of the better ones, and it's open.

That's all I can find. You can judge yourself if you need it to be 100% open-source, if you need it to be free, and if you need it to run on a particular platform. Perhaps you might settle on a combination of these, since it doesn't look likely that you'll find something that meets all 3 conditions (assuming you were looking for it).

If you're a programmer, then by all means help out with one of the open-source projects out of the ones mentioned above. Lots of them could use things like improved rendering (speed, effects etc), and the ability to load lots of different file formats.

I was refering to the screenshots on this page, not the ones on the first page.

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