Bricscad

Bricscad now available in 6 languages, Pro version confirmed

Posted Monday 11 October 2010 à 11 h 17 by Normand

Two quick bits of news on Bricscad.

Some localized versions are available since October 5th. In addition to English, you can now get Bricscad in Czech, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

On the Bricscad (Linux) forum, many users have expressed concerns over the last few months to the fact that there was no official news about a Linux version of Bricscad Pro. On September 21st, Mr. Erik De Keyser, Bricsys' CEO answered them on the forum :

Hi All,

Let's take away a few doubts.
We certainly will produce a Bricscad Pro for LINUX including the ACIS engine for 3D modeling. Rendering will also be supported. Favorable upgrade paths of course will be available. Regarding BRX - we are exploring the possibilities: the how's and the when's. Please give us some time to come up with the answers. Hope this makes it absolutely clear that we are serious about Bricscad for LINUX.

Note : BRX is Bricsys' own software development kit.

How to run Bricscad Classic V10.4.9 Beta on 64-bit Ubuntu

Posted Monday 19 July 2010 à 14 h 46 by Normand

The latest Bricscad Linux V10.4.9 Beta was released almost a month ago, on June 22nd. As with previous Beta releases, a Debian *.deb package is available for Debian/Ubuntu and derivative operating systems.

The thing is, even though V10.4.9 apparently installs without problem on 64-bit systems, the software won't start. When launched from a terminal, the error message is as follows:

exec: 3: /opt/bricsys/bricscad/v10/bricscad: not found

And even if the Bricscad (Linux) Beta release notes acknowledge the problem, they don't provide a solution:

Installation issues on 64 bit. It is possible to run Bricscad (Linux) on a 64 bit system. However, the Bricscad (Linux) installers do not automatically all required 32 bit libraries. Additional manual setup is needed. We aim to fix and/or document flaws in the installers as soon as possible.

So after some exchange with my fellow users on the Bricsys support forums, I was finally able to run Bricscad on Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit.

The solution

You just need to install the ia32-libs shared libraries. (Click on the link to instantly install the libraries, provided the apturl protocol is installed on your system, and your browser supports it.)

Bricscad For Linux goes Beta (Update)

Posted Wednesday 12 May 2010 à 9 h 36 by Normand

Big news from Bricsys today: Bricscad for Linux just went from Alpha to Beta status. The 10.4.4 release is available for testing here. A banner with download link is now on Bricsys' English homepage (the other languages pages have not been updated yet). The move to beta means it is possible to file support requests to report bugs.

Some things to note with this release:

Printing is now available
Improved Debian/Ubuntu install package: it now support 64-bit architecture
The .tgz archive was corrected as well
The 'Help' command now opens the online help in an external browser
Some issues still remain; Bricsys recommends that beta-testers should regularly check the Release Notes page for an updated list of known issues.

It's been clear for some time that the "early Q2 final release" announced back in February wouldn't be met. With this move to beta, I think we may be looking at a final release by end of summer (which is what was told an eager customer by a French vendor, a short while ago).

Update: according to Bricsys' press release, the first commercial version is to be released at the end of June 2010. Thanks to "Visitor" (who left a comment) for pointing that out.

Bricscad For Linux Alpha 10.4.2: now available in Ubuntu and Fedora Installers

Posted Wednesday 28 April 2010 à 14 h 47 by Normand

Two days from the previous Bricscad For Linux's planned expiry date, Bricsys provides today a new development release.

What's new: Debian/Ubuntu (.deb) and Fedora/Red Hat (.rpm) installers are now available for easier installation. A generic .tgz archive is also available for other Linux distros. Note that the .deb package is for 32-bit operating systems only, I wasn't able to install it on my desktop PC which is on Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit.

The DWG 2010 format is now supported.

One thing I noticed: the installer is named BricscadClassic-V10.4.2-1-en_US, which I think means it supports 2D only. Small disappointment for me, since I'm interested in ACIS modeling on the Linux version.

For more details and the download link, click here.

Bricsys releases Bricscad for Linux Alpha 10.3.10

Posted Tuesday 30 March 2010 à 14 h 58 by Normand

A new release v10.3.10 of Bricscad for Linux alpha was announced today in the Bricsys support forums.

Here's the direct download link. Many more bug fixes were added, read the Bricscad for Linux alpha 10.3.10 discussion thread for details.

As with previous releases, this one will expire after a definite time, here on April 30th, 2010.

Bricscad warning popup window

Now something new from Bricsys: you can subscribe to a Bricscad for Linux RSS feed to receive further notification of subsequent versions. Or it can be accessed as html page here: Bricscad for Linux RSS feed as html page.

Bricscad for Linux Alpha 10.3.7 is out

Posted Thursday 18 March 2010 à 0 h 16 by Normand

Bricsys released Tuesday March 16th a new Alpha development version of its Bricscad for Linux software.

The release can be downloaded for testing here.

Notable changes are:

Dimensioning should now work
Fixed problem with Gradient dialog box
Hard-coded accelerator keys (Delete, F1 to F12) now active, but only when drawing window has focus
Undo/Redo buttons active in Multiline Text
Many more fixes

For a detailed list of changes, check out this annoncement on Bricsys' support forum.

Some interesting info was given on what form the final installer will take. Debian (.deb) and RPM (.rpm) packages will be provided, along with a .tar.gz archive for custom installations. What has not been mentioned is if separate 64-bit packages will be provided.

I believe that with both .deb and .rpm packages, most major Linux distros should be covered; Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives for the former, and Fedora/Mandriva/openSUSE for the latter.

Review: Bricscad for Linux Alpha 10.3.4 (& 10.3.6)

Posted Saturday 6 March 2010 à 9 h 33 by Normand

First, some clarification: although this is my third post about Bricscad already, I do intend to talk about other software on this blog, and obviously free and open source software!

In my two previous posts I talked about Bricscad, an AutoCAD clone which shares with its counterpart a similar UI (in classic mode if compared to AutoCAD 2009 & 2010), its command line, and uses the DWG format natively. Bricscad has the advantage of price over AutoCAD, selling for a fraction of an AutoCAD licence. Bricscad V10 Pro, which supports 3D ACIS solids, is even cheaper than the 2D-only AutoCAD LT. This comes at a price though, as it lags AutoCAD in performance and features.

These are my thoughts after reviewing Alpha releases 10.3.4 and 10.3.6. As I had already created numerous screenshots of the 10.3.4 release, I chose to use them unchanged in this post since the 10.3.6 release does not show any major cosmetic change. Only five of these screenshots are shown here, but you can find a link to an image gallery at the end of the post, where the whole set of eighteen is available.

Bricscad for Linux Alpha 10.3.6 now available

Posted Saturday 27 February 2010 à 11 h 21 by Normand

I intended to post a review of Bricscad for Linux Alpha 10.3.4, but Bricsys released Alpha 10.3.6 three days ago! Bummer, as I've already laboriously created a gallery that includes almost twenty screenshots of the 10.3.4 release!

After a quick review of the last release, there doesn't seem to be any major changes, so to avoid wasting what I've already made, I'll publish my post on 10.3.4 as planned... as soon as I find time to write it!

In the meanwhile, for anyone who wants to check it out for themselves, here's the Bricscad for Linux Alpha 10.3.6 download link (registration required).

AutoCAD on Linux? Nope, But Bricscad May Be The Next Best Thing

Posted Wednesday 17 February 2010 à 9 h 27 by Normand

When thinking about CAD, AutoCAD inevitably comes to mind. Even though more powerful products have existed for a long time (e.g. feature-driven parametric modelers like Pro|Engineer, CATIA, NX, SolidWorks, Solid Edge or Autodesk's own Inventor), many companies are still working in 2D - and AutoCAD has long been the most widely used 2D design & drafting app. In 2006, Autodesk estimated the number of active DWG files to be in excess of one billion. That is one heck of a lot of files in a proprietary format that no open source CAD program can so far open, because no working open source DWG library exists at the moment. There is the LibreDWG project in the works, but I gather it's in its infancy. And with Autodesk's custom to revise its DWG file format every 3-4 years, this will not be an easy task.