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[Eric Wilhelm]

# from Terry Hancock
# on Sunday 20 November 2005 02:56 pm:

>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.

When I started Scratch Computing, the plan was to deliver custom 
software solutions for architects, engineers, manufacturers, and 
construction while incorporating, creating, and improving open-source 
software in the field.  So far, the only part of the plan that has not 
held up is the market demand for custom software that isn't an AutoCAD 
plugin, etc.  It seems to be a problem of very large or very small 
firms, where the very large ones have built proprietary in-house 
components and the very small ones cannot afford to build anything 
custom at all.

The primary hurdle, as I see it, is the basic libraries -- including 
both geometric functions and file-format support.  There are just too 
many files out there in existing formats for a new program to break 
into even marginal usage without some import/export support.  I've seen 
many open-source half-starts where the "save/load" operations are 
essentially a serialization of whatever memory model the developer 
happened to be using.

The uber-converter is a plan to break out of that pattern, and 
fortunately I have attracted some sponsorship for this from Xara, but 
unfortunately, I have not seen any funded interest come from the 
architecture or engineering fields.

--Eric
-- 
Consumers want choice, consumers want openness.
--Rob Glaser
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