QCAD is a

computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

(CAD) software application for 2D design and drafting. It is available for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user 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 ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. The QCAD GUI is based on the Qt framework.

Description

QCAD is partly released under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. Precompiled packages are available for 32-bit and 64-bit Linux platforms, Microsoft Windows OS and macOS. QCAD is developed by RibbonSoft. Development on QCAD began in October 1999, starting with code from CAM Expert. QCAD 2, designed to "make QCAD more productive, more user friendly, more flexible and increase its compatibility with other products" began development in May 2002. QCAD 3 was first released in August 2011 with an

ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a standard for scripting languages, including JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript. It is best known as a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different web browsers. It is stan ...

(

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

) interface as major addition. Some of the interface and concepts behind QCAD are similar to those of AutoCAD. QCAD uses the

DXF AutoCAD DXF (Drawing Interchange Format, or Drawing Exchange Format) is a computer-aided design (CAD) data file format developed by Autodesk to enable CAD data exchange and interoperability between AutoCAD on different computing platforms. His ...

file format internally and to save and import files. Support for the popular DWG file format is available as a commercial plugin based on the Open Design Alliance DWG libraries. Starting from version 3.7 QCAD is distributed as Professional Trial that works for a limited time, or as Community Edition as source code only, so users need to self compile or remove the QCAD Professional add-on running in trial mode. Although much of the software source is under the GPL-3.0-or-later license there is also significant functionality not available under a

free software license A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) ...

. QCAD has a large library of different templates.

Multiplatform support

QCAD operates on Linux, macOS 0.7 (Lion) or later UNIX (

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

), Solaris for x86 and SPARC, and Windows , 7, Vista, XP, 2000 This is of importance for collaboration across a diverse computing environment.

References

External links

* *
A good tutorial for QCAD

QCAD downloads for all platforms

QCAD Community Forums
* KAD (KDE aided design) is a version of QCAD for the

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

Linux Desktop. Se
KAD – KDE aided design
2D Computer-aided design software Computer-aided design software for Linux Engineering software that uses Qt Free computer-aided design software Free educational software MacOS computer-aided design software {{CAD-software-stub

Description

Multiplatform support

See also

References

External links