29 Vector Drawing Programs

Ed Pegg writes "I did a survey of all available vector-based drawing programs, in anticipation of SVG in the next Firefox. I found 29 different vector drawing programs. Of these, 14 were free or open source. More than I expected. Did I miss any good ones?"

Comments

You forgot notepad

[dnixon112]

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd" >
<svg width="12cm" height="4cm" viewBox="0 0 1200 400"
     xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1">
<rect x="1" y="1" width="1198" height="398"
        fill="none" stroke="blue" stroke-width="2" />
<circle cx="600" cy="200" r="100" fill="red" stroke="blue" stroke-width="10" />
</svg>

A few of these should be counted . . .

[Brendor]

Alias Maya has a great vector renderer. It outputs decent AI/EPS files as well as .swf files.

Also there were previous slashdot stories about Pixar's in-house Sketch Review Tool, (a hybrid vector/raster tool) and Microsoft Acryllic.

I believe Studio Artist is primarily vector based.

There are also many vector programs for the sign/graphics industry to control CNC routers and plotters. FlexiSIGN is one of them.

Does nobody here use Freshmeat?

[jd]

Some of these are probably listed elsewhere, but many aren't (as of the time of this posting) and it's good to have them collected in one place, anyway.

This list is NOT comprehensive, even of what is on Freshmeat (which, in turn, is not comprehensive in what is Open Source, which in turn is not comprehensive in what exists) but it should make for a good start.

Oh, and this list was trivial to make. Once you have such a list, it is then easy to go out and try the software to see if it'll do what you want. According to the fictional character Sherlock Holmes, "it is a mistake, often made, to theorize without data". So, when you theorize as to what software you'd like to use, here is some data you can use.

• White Dune - one of the best VRML editors - but, then, who uses VRML?
• Sodipopi - a very respectable editor
• Vector Visuals - looks like a nice package
• Gnu Plotutils - long-in-the-tooth, but is pretty standard and does do SVG.
• Quantum GIS does do some GIS-related vector work, but it is unclear as to whether you can really edit the vectors, per se
• Artstream - not been maintained in a while, though
• Skencil is a package recommended by Artstream's developers as a good, modern alternative
• JFDraw - Seems to be a good drawing package.
• Sketsa - a good sketching package, looks pretty powerful
• Figurine - doesn't look terribly maintained, but does look ggood.
• Cenon - Not sure about this one, but seems OK
• Inkscape - seems to be recommended by other Slashdotians.
• GDraw for gnustep - which, of course, means you'd need to install GNUStep to be able to use it.
• Autotrace - a vital tool if you are wanting to vectorize raster images. There are a lot of tracing programs out there, but this one seems fairly popular. Not sure if it strictly fits the definition of a "drawing program", though.
• tgif
• Gestalter
• KDE 2D Workbench
• RLPlot
• Magelan Graphics Editor
• Geist
• VisIt - arguable as to whether it really counts
• X3D-Edit
• mjbWorld
• Dia
• QCad
• JGraphpad
• Flash For Linux
• Gaphor
• DoubleType - good for those doing their own fonts
• Chemtool, as molecules can be vectors too!
• Glips Graffiti SVG Editor