[scribus] Scribus as a Technical Drawing Tool

[John Beardmore]

On 09/04/2012 12:55, Ivan Winters wrote:
> John Beardmore said :

>> (I know there's an argument for doing this in CAD, and that's something
>> we've looked at, but haven't got to grips with yet. We're still waiting
>> for a package that will do for CAD what Scribus has done for DTP.)
>
> As someone who occasionally needs to do CAD I have two suggestions to make,
> John. I am assuming you want 'Autocad' type of user interface and
> capabilities but do not want to pay AutoCad prices.

:)

Not necessarily Autocad like. I've no reason to assume that autocad is 
necessarily or inevitably the best option. My limited exposure to 
autodesk has not been encouraging though, so I'm certainly happy to look 
at other alternatives.

My starting point is that I've no CAD experience, but I'm getting fed up 
with sketching designs on paper, scanning them, then having people laugh 
at them.

If we're going to start using CAD though, I'd rather it was an open 
source project that's likely to grow and develop, and I'd want to be 
able to import the drawings into Scribus, via PDF, SVG, or as very last 
resort, some kind of bitmap.


> A cheap near copy of
> Autocad which I have found very usefull and which is very stable is
> progeCad (some copies of Autocad are very unstable - progeCad is stable).

OK.


> The other Free option is DraftSight from the French Dassault group (that's
> the company that builds Mirage jets). The English language version is
> excellent. There are free training videos, a users forum and regular
> update/info mailouts to all registered users.

:)

Good to see the defence industry doing something useful !

Reminds me a bit of,

     "For more than 20 years, BRL-CAD has been the primary
     tri-service solid modeling CAD system used by the U.S.
     military to model weapons systems for vulnerability and
     lethality analyses",

though they seem to have managed to release it as open source.

These things are interesting, and may work very well so I'll probably 
take a look, but my colleagues would be bothered about the ethical 
credentials I think.


Cheers, J/.
-- 
John Beardmore,MSc EDM (Open),B.A. Chem (Oxon),CMIOSH,CEnv,MIEMA,MEI
Managing Director, T4 Sustainability Limited. http://www.T4sLtd.co.uk/
Registered Office: 181 Belper Road, Stanley Common, Ilkeston. DE7 6FT
Company Reg: 4441097, VAT Number: 797 2239 85, MCS: ELC54087.
Energy Audit, Carbon Management, Design Advice, Sustainable Energy
Consultancy and Installation, Carbon Trust Standard Registered Assessor
Transition Training and Consultancy Energy Resilience Assessor
Phone: 0845 4561332   Mobile: 07785 563116   Skype: t4sustainability