![]() In 2010, Ries van Twisk decided to add CAM features to the Community Edition of QCAD and instead got himself into working on the Qt4 port and then on the core features of what later became LibreCAD. Some chosen script extensions and modules could have been released under a different license, creating a new business model. All in all, no reason for hard feelings.Īccording to Andrew Mustun, an open source version of QCAD 3 was also planned and would have made perfect sense from a community perspective as well as a business perspective: Reportedly, there have been few patches and more other kinds of contributions - translations, CAD part library items, fonts, hatch patterns. The lack of strong opinions on the matter could partially be explained by the lack of source code contributions. Andrew says that feedback about QCAD, the QCAD community edition and the business model was mostly positive with very few negative voices. The final release of QCAD 3.0 followed in summer 2012.īefore you ask, according to Ribbonsoft, the whole idea of mixing the open source and the closed source business models wasn’t exactly controversial. The community edition was years old by the time. It was the first new public release of QCAD since late 2009. Indeed, around 2009 the company started rewriting QCAD and released the first public beta version of QCad v3.0 in August 2011. ![]() According to Andrew, the time gap between them was usually about a year, and it increased while the lead developer was working on QCAD 3, since there was nothing new to release during that period of completely rewriting QCAD. The difference between commercial and free versions was mostly about amount of features and the date of availability. QCAD is a CAD system for Windows, Mac and Linux, created by Ribbonsoft and available in two editions: the commercial one and the free one called Community Edition (GPLv2). As if recent LibreDWG story wasn’t quite sufficient, the most recent news is that Ribbonsoft is not going to release Community Edition of QCAD right now. Taking all of this into consideration, we can safely say LibreCAD is a useful tool for generating 2D CAD drawings that did not pop any kind of errors, freeze or hang in our tests.It’s quite disturbing how much controversy a small software niche can get in a relatively small timeframe. The interface requires some getting used to, while the response time is quite good. The computer’s performance is not going to be hampered, as the amount of resources required are low at all times. ![]() You can show or hide layers, as well as add, remove, edit or lock them with just a click of the button. The utility can help you to calculate the distance between two points or from a point to an entity, the angle between two lines and the total length of a selected element. ![]() You can move, copy, align, rotate, mirror, scale and trim elements, as well as lengthen, bevel, divide, stretch, delete and explode text into letters. In addition to that, it is possible to add plenty of items in your drawings, such as lines, points, circles, ellipses, splines, polylines and text boxes, while you can also zoom in and out with ease. This program supports a pretty long list of formats at import, including DXF, LFF, CXF, JWW, BMP, GIF, ICO, JPG, PNG, PPM, SVG, TIFF, WBMP, XBM and TGA, while export is possible using DXF, LFF, CXF, DDS, ICNS, PBM, PNG, ICO, BMP, SVG, TIFF, ICO and PDF extensions. Impressive import and export capabilities It encloses a menu bar, a pretty large number of buttons so that you can add elements with ease and a few panes to help you view your on-going project, logs and a list with all added layers. ![]() The interface you come by might seem a bit too cluttered at first, yet it just requires some getting used to it, especially seeing the comprehensive Help documentation it comes bundled with. The installation process runs quite smoothly, yet if you are interested in bypassing this process altogether, you should know that a portable edition is available for download, called Portable LibreCAD. LibreCAD is a software application that provides users with a free and simple method of designing CAD drawings, import and export items, and take advantage of the integrated templates. ![]()
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