Random thoughts, tips & tricks about Slackware-Linux, Lego and Star Wars

Archive for the 'CAD' Category

January 5th, 2012 by Niels Horn in , ,

FreeCAD and OpenCASCADE
Building a new version of FreeCAD and OpenCASCADE is always a lot of fun…
These two projects are constantly evolving, but almost never 'in sync'.
In December a new version of the OpenCASCADE library was released - 6.5.2. It solves several bugs and looked like a good reason to build a newer version of FreeCAD [...]

December 25th, 2011 by Niels Horn in , |

Last month version 7.20.4 of BRLCAD was released with lots of improvements. You can check the log here for details.
This weekend I finally had some time to update my SlackBuild script and submit the update to SlackBuilds.org. While the script is waiting for approval, you can download pre-built packages from my site.

August 14th, 2011 by Niels Horn in , , , , |

Updating FreeCAD was long over due - the last package I built was for 0.9.2646 and they're currently in the 0.11 series. But it is not a simple package to build - it requires some time and patience to get it all right…
Dependencies
FreeCAD is based on OpenCASCADE, which has been updated a few [...]

March 30th, 2011 by Niels Horn in , , |

After some requests I received, I updated two of my packages for the latest versions:

BRL-CAD - updated for version 7.18.2
viewvc - updated for version 1.1.10

BRL-CAD now has a working version of Archer, user-friendly interface to mged.
viewvc 1.1.10 fixes some bugs.
The new packages can be found on my site.

May 17th, 2010 by Niels Horn in , |

In preparation for the upcoming release of Slackware 13.1, I reorganized my package repository and took a moment to clean up my Slackware Packages page.
It is like 99% automated now, getting the descriptions from the slack-desc files, the category from the SlackBuilds repository (after approval), etc. Some categories I still add manually through a small [...]

May 9th, 2010 by Niels Horn in ,

Introduction
BRL-CAD is an open-source solid modeling program originally created by the US Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, that later became the Army Research Laboratory. One of the original creators was Mike Muuss, who also invented the program that has probably been installed on more computers than anything else: the 'ping' utility. (Do check the source code [...]

May 5th, 2010 by Niels Horn in , |

Introduction
The second CAD program I decided to test on Slackware was FreeCAD. As the name implies, this one is completely free, which interested me
The description on their homepage describes the idea and purpose of this program:
FreeCAD is a general purpose 3D CAD modeler. The development is completely Open Source (GPL & LGPL License). FreeCAD [...]

May 1st, 2010 by Niels Horn in , |

Introduction
As I wrote in my previous post, looking for a CAD program that runs on Slackware, I decided to check out VariCAD. VariCAD is proprietary software (which means you have to buy it to use it), but they have a fully working Linux version. According to its homepage:
VariCAD is a 3D/2D CAD system for mechanical [...]

April 24th, 2010 by Niels Horn in , |

History
Many years ago (talking about the mid/late 80s) I worked at a company that used AutoCAD for 2D construction designing. This was done on Sun Graphical Workstations that were networked together using a Thick Ethernet coaxial cable and a Unix file and print server. I learned a lot about shell scripting, network configuration, lpr / [...]