On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:10:48 -0400, Stuart Brorson wrote: > I'd like to hear opinions about Vericad -- positive and negative -- > particularly from folks who've used it.
I use varicad to do the mechanical construction of my lasers. (http://lilalaser.de/lila/images/products/Laser_Breadboard_schlank.png) > Are there better packages out there (for Linux) now? None that I know. I seriously tried qcad but the user interface is a real pain. In addition qcad is 2D only, while varicad supports 3D modelling. > Is Vericad worth the $500 cost? In my case: yes, definitely. At the physics institute and for my last job I did 2D construction drawings with regular 2D drawing applications like Corel draw and xfig. Doing the comparable tasks with a dedicated tool was a revelation :-) > Is it overkill for creating 2D drawings of mechanical parts for the local > job shop, or underkill? It is just about the right app for the job. Varicad works best if you do a 3D model of the parts and derive the 2D drawings from that model. > Does it support DXF adequately so that it > interoperates with other CAD tools nicely? Qcad had no problem to import dxf exports of varicad. Circles and arcs are exported as such and not dissolved into little straight vectors. I had no real world use for this ability yet, so some quirks may have been undiscovered. The other direction from dxf to varicad proved useful, though: Some enclosure manufacturers provide dxf drawings. These can be imported and converted into 3D models. Some strong points of varicad: * Intuitive 3D interface. * Excellent 3D graphics. * Easy to derive 2D views of 3D model. * Complete set of dimensioning styles. Some weak points of varicad: * 2D interface not quite as intuitive as the 3D part -- Still way better than qcad, though. * 2D does not update automatically if the 3D model changes. * 2D printing works, but suffers from poor GUI. * No high quality rendered views of 3D objects. (The the image linked above is a screen dump from the varcad GUI.) A workaround is to import the vector data to the full blown render engine blender. This works and produces beautiful pictures. But it involves a rather tedious amount of work with blender. * Very little control on meshing. * No real bending or stretching of 3D objects * No physics beyond a primitive check of mechanical collision. * The suite is closed source. Hardware requirements are moderate. I got good results from a AMD K7 box that was born in 2002 (1.8 GHz, 256 MB RAM). Good 3D acceleration is mandatory to get smooth 3D performance. OpenGL is a must. My matrox G550 didn't quite support openGL with xorg. I learned the hard way, that Matrox does not bother to support linux anymore. Now I am happy with a nvidia FX5200 graphics board. Just my 2ยข ---<(kaimartin)>--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak http://lilalaser.de/blog _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
