[freearchitecture] mailing list traffic, interested persons, website

[Terry Hancock]

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 20:41:54 +0200
Lars O.Grobe <grobe at gmx.net> wrote:
> I am wondering about who is still here, as an active or
> interested  subscriber. Maybe we should start giving some
> new life to this by  sending a small into about us as
> persons, and with our ideas, why we  spent the time to add
> out addresses to this list, why we think that  free and
> architecture might become not only two nice words, but a 
> meaning... and so on.

I joined the list some years ago because I'm interested in
free-design and free-design tools. I have noticed not only
that there is as yet, no really good free-licensed 2D/3D CAD
system out there, but also that several other people have
noticed it too, and that there have been several
"initiatives" or "suggestions" etc for starting a project to
make one. On the other hand, there haven't been any big
successes.

The most successful working tools would probably be:

2D:
QCAD ( http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html )
PythonCAD ( http://www.pythoncad.org/ )

3D:
BRL-CAD ( http://brlcad.org/ )
Varkon  ( http://www.tech.oru.se/cad/varkon/ )

But I'm not really satisfied with any of these (maybe they
are modules of the solution, but not the whole thing).  I'd
like to see something with an interface much more like:

Blender ( http://www.blender.org )

which is a fantastic 3D modelling program, but as I'm sure
you realize, 3D modelling is not quite the same thing as
full CAD/CAM capabilities.

I've also been looking into the ISO-10303 STEP standard for
modelling 3D data, but this is a universe unto itself. The
STEP standard has been "in production" since the late 1980s,
and is a tremendously overblown, committee-based standard.
On the other hand, you'd be a fool to ignore all the work it
represents in cataloging and modelling 3D design data.
Likely, a free CAD/CAM solution would include at least a
subset of STEP modelling capabilities, and thus be able to
interface with them.  I've been writing about this problem
for Free Software Magazine (
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com ), although the article
that's really about this ("Towards a Free Matter Economy 4:
Tools of the Trade") won't go out for a couple of months
(should be in Issue 11).  I did blog about my frustration in
trying to track down the STEP standard, though:

http://blog.freesoftwaremagazine.com/users/t.hancock/2005/11/04/secret_standards

You should also know about the TC184-SC4 page involved with
STEP, the STEP modularization repository at Sourceforge,
and the EXFF "Engineering eXchange For Free" project:

http://www.tc184-sc4.org
http://stepmod.sourceforge.net
http://exff.org

I'm planning to create a web page with a wiki and some links
to keep track of the various projects and half-projects I've
been finding. Maybe there'd be some benefit to introducing
people to each other. It's clear there is interest in
creating better free-software CAD tools, but it hasn't been
really organized, as far as I can tell -- no project has
really broken out and attracted a lot of attention.

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com