Hi. I'm pleased to announce the twenty-eighth development release of PythonCAD, a CAD package for open-source software users. As the name implies, PythonCAD is written entirely in Python. The goal of this project is to create a fully scriptable drafting program that will match and eventually exceed features found in commercial CAD software. PythonCAD is released under the GNU Public License (GPL).
PythonCAD requires Python 2.2 or newer. The interface is GTK 2.0 based, and uses the PyGTK module for interfacing to GTK. The design of PythonCAD is built around the idea of separating the interface from the back end as much as possible. By doing this, it is hoped that both GNOME and KDE interfaces can be added to PythonCAD through usage of the appropriate Python module. Addition of other PythonCAD interfaces will depend on the availability of a Python module for that particular interface and developer interest and action. The twenty-eighth release of PythonCAD offers improved abilities to edit entities in a drawing. Previous releases had inconsistent behavior for entity modification as some operations first required selecting then entities to change and then selecting the operation to perform, where other changes were accomplished by first selecting the action and then selecting entities. The latest release allows for entity modifications to be performed in either mode, thus making the code more consistent as well as easier to use. For people familiar with AutoCAD, PythonCAD now has 'NOUN->VERB' and 'VERB->NOUN' entity modification behavior. Numerous internal changes to the code utilizing more current functionality are also included in this release, in particular a rewrite of the entity moving code. Also, the ability to adjust the attributes of the text objects in a Dimension have been improved as well as simplified. And as usual, a wide number of bug fixes and other code enhancements are present in the release. A mailing list for the development and use of PythonCAD is available. Visit the following page for information about subscribing and viewing the mailing list archive: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythoncad Visit the PythonCAD web site for more information about what PythonCAD does and aims to be: http://www.pythoncad.org/ Come and join me in developing PythonCAD into a world class drafting program! Art Haas -- Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. -Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list