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2 PrefaceScope of This ManualThis manual is designed to get you started using LibreCAD and to help you using it more efficiently. Further it will give you an idea of the more advanced possibilities behind LibreCAD. Chapter 3 will introduce you in the world of computer aided design (CAD). If you've already worked with a CAD program before, you might want to skip this chapter. CAD - For the UninitiatedIf you take a look around you, most objects you will see once started off as a drawing in a CAD program. From your ball pen, your desk, furniture to your house and probably even your city - everything once had to be constructed either manually on paper or more likely with a CAD system. CAD stands for Computer-Aided Design. It's essential to realize that CAD applications differ from painting or drawing programs. Drawings made in CAD applications represent real-world objects in their exact original measures. The most important factors are accuracy and to show as many details as necessary to produce the object. If you're used to drawing programs, you will most likely find it inconvenient that there's usually no or only limited drag-and-drop functionality in CAD systems. This is part of the idea, that everything is done accurately. The drawing doesn't only have to look accurate on the screen - it has to be accurate as a model. Moving an entity around means moving it from an exactly defined location to another exactly defined position. However, once you got used to this approach, you will never want to do technical drawings in an ordinary drawing program anymore. Is LibreCAD for me?There are many different CAD systems out there and depending on what you intend to do, LibreCAD might or might not fit your bill. If you are looking for a 3D modeling CAD application, you'll have to look somewhere else. LibreCAD is a 2D CAD program. That means that everything is projected onto a plane. This doesn't mean that it's only suitable to represent 2D objects though. A couple of 2D drawings which represent an object from different perspectives (e.g. from the side, the top and from the front) provide usually enough information to fully define the object and all its dimensions. Some of the main reasons why you might want to use LibreCAD are its simplicity, the user friendly interface, its many features or simply the fact that it works on your favorite platform - be it Linux, an other Unix system, Windows or Mac OS X. Last but not least LibreCAD is part of the open source movement. This means that if you're a programmer you can add your own functionality. LibreCAD has an estimated user base of over 10'000 people worldwide. Its users range from industrial companies in the fields of mechanical and electronic engineering to private users, teachers and students. There are many other capable CAD systems out there and most of them offer much more than LibreCAD does. But most of them are bound to one single platform or are simply not affordable for many potential users. That's where LibreCAD kicks in. LibreCAD targets the hobbyists, occasional CAD users and people who are not CAD professionals but still need to draw plans once in a while. LibreCAD is the CAD for the rest of us. Who Is Behind LibreCAD?
LibreCAD has been started as a fork of QCad CE edition. QCad CE was not
maintained anymore by Ribbonsoft and only few people where interested
in supplying patches and keeping QCad support by the Linux distributions.
QCad CE is based on QT3, and since 2010 most Linux distributions are
going to abandon QT3 in favor of supporting QT4 only. Without a
port of QCad CE to QT4, no support for QCad would be available in any
of the Linux disutrbutions soon.
Mr R. van Twisk picked up QCad CE and made a full port to QT4 (with
qt3 support enabled). This was later picked up by many people when
new translations have been created, the QCad CE was re-named to LibreCAD
(FreeCAD in english) and in the beginning of 2011 the project
gained traction again. How can I get LibreCAD?You can get the latest version of LibreCAD from www.LibreCAD.org . On this web site you can also find more documentation and other resources for LibreCAD. LibreCAD and QtQt is the cross platform C++ application framework that LibreCAD is based on. Much of the work involved in LibreCAD is done by Nokia (in the past Trolltech ( http://qt.nokia.com/products/ ), the guys who develop Qt. |
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