Archimedes – "The Open CAD" – (also called Arquimedes) is a computer-aided design (CAD) program being developed with direct input from architects and architecture firms. With this design philosophy, the developers hope to create software better suited for architecture than the currently widely used

AutoCAD AutoCAD is a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application. Developed and marketed by Autodesk, AutoCAD was first released in December 1982 as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics controllers. ...

, and other available CAD software. Archimedes Project The program is

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, ...

released under the

Eclipse Public License The Eclipse Public License (EPL) is a free and open source software license most notably used for the Eclipse IDE and other projects by the Eclipse Foundation. It replaces the Common Public License (CPL) and removes certain terms relating to ...

Features

* Basic drawing ** Lines, Polylines, Arcs and Circles. ** Editable Text ** Explode ** Offset * Advanced CAD functions ** Trimming ** Filleting ** Area measurement * Miscellaneous **

Autosave Autosave is a saving function in many computer applications and video games which automatically saves the current changes or progress in the program or game, intending to prevent data loss should the user be otherwise prevented from doing so manua ...

SVG Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium sinc ...

export **

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

export ** English, Portuguese, and Italian language support

Integration with other CAD systems

Archimedes uses its own

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. ...

-based

open format An open file format is a file format for storing digital data, defined by an openly published specification usually maintained by a standards organization, and which can be used and implemented by anyone. Open file format is licensed with open lic ...

, which resembles

. It does not yet include support for other CAD formats, but DXF support is planned.

Development

Archimedes is written in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

, and the latest version runs on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

based systems, and might run on platforms that are supported by

LWJGL The Lightweight Java Game Library (LWJGL) is an open-source software library that provides bindings to a variety of C libraries for video game developers to Java. It exposes cross-platform libraries commonly used in developing video games and ...

and a Java Virtual machine on version 1.5.0 or later.

History

The Archimedes Project started as a collaboration between a group of programmers and architecture students at the

University of São Paulo The University of São Paulo ( pt, Universidade de São Paulo, USP) is a public university in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. It is the largest Brazilian public university and the country's most prestigious educational institution, the best ...

, in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, in 2005. The project is currently being worked on as free and open source software. There is a team of students from the University working on it as collaborators under the coordination of Hugo (project leader) but everyone is free to contribute with plugins and/or patches.

Timeline

* Archimedes was registered as a

SourceForge.net SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, Mirror site ...

project on July 12, 2005. * The last stable pre-RCP version was 0.16.0, released on October 25, 2000. * The first stable version after the RCP migration was 0.50.0, released on April 25, 2007.

Migration to Eclipse RCP in version 0.5x

A migration to the

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...

Rich Client Platform The rich client platform (RCP) is a programmer tool that makes it easier to integrate independent software components, where most of the data processing occurs on the client side. Overview RCP is a software consisting of the following components ...

in versions 0.5x has greatly improved the user interface model and stability, but some of the functionality from the last pre-RCP version is still being transferred. Version 0.58.0 moved this process a step closer by adding trimming, leader, svg and pdf exporting.

External links

Archimedes Home Page

Archimedes on SourceForge.net

Hugo Corbucci's Blog (Archimedes Project Lead)

Github Repository

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Archimedes (Cad) Computer-aided design software for Linux Free computer-aided design software Free software programmed in Java (programming language)