So what does more than 35 years of development bring you? BRL-CAD is made up of more than 400 different constituent tools and applications spread across more than a million lines of source code. Originally developed by Mike Muuss at the Army Research Laboratory, BRL-CAD is been used for decades by the United States military for modeling weapon systems, but it also has been used for much more everyday design tasks, from academic to industrial design to health applications.
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In fact, BRL-CAD is so old that it has been credited with being the oldest source code repository of an application currently in active development. You have direct access to the code base.īRL-CAD is a cross-platform CAD tool that dates back to 1979, although it would take 25 years for the source code to be released under an open source license.
It has integrated Python support.Īs with all other CAD applications on this list, it's open source, so if you have in-house developers creating plugins for it, there's no need to deal with a clunky API. Its geometry editor can import STEP, BREP, IGES, STL, and XAO files, and its mesh editor can import UNIV, MED, GGNS, SAUV, and more. SALOME integrates a CAD and CAE modeling tool with industrial meshing algorithms and advanced 3D visualization. It's a side-project of the 3D powerhouse, OpenCascade, and has some serious industrial users. The SALOME platform is an application and framework suitable for industrial design and simulation. If your needs are a little more specific and you really need a dedicated CAD program, here are great open source choices to consider: SALOME
And for the relatively simple task of planning out my home landscaping projects, Sweet Home 3D has been an excellent open source alternative. But that alone didn't make AutoCAD the best choice.Īs I've strived to replace more and more software in my life with open source options, Blender turned out to be just as good for my 3D modeling needs, whether I was playing with models created for a 3D printer or looking at landscapes exported from other programs.
I worked with AutoCAD briefly in grad school, so when I wanted to play with drawing three-dimensional plans for something, it was pretty much all I knew. My personal journey through open source CAD programs was no different.
Whether it has all of the bells and whistles of the original is irrelevant if those features sit paid for but unused. The situation is no different than discovering that the person who insists that they "need" Photoshop is just using it to draw a few geometric shapes and remove red-eye from photos what they really need is a graphics editing tool that can replace those specific functions. The trick for deciding whether a replacement piece of software, whether open or closed, is a good choice for you is to tease out exactly what your needs are. But I would argue that the reason for your disappointment has nothing to do with the licensing of the product-drop-in replacements for complex programs with long-time users who have specific needs and expectations for their software are hard. Let's start by being honest and upfront about something: If you're looking for a drop-in replacement for your existing CAD program that will provide identical functionality and workflow without making any changes to your processes, you're going to be disappointed. So how do the open source alternatives to AutoCAD stack up? The answer depends on how you plan to use them.
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