Beta 6 plans, Community Development, Ubuntu 11.04

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Scott

Here’s an update with what LibreCAD is up to:

Logo contest update:

There were some great submissions and comments, but no clear cut choice for the logo. Dalton Designer appears to be the leader. We’re going to set up another poll on the front page of librecad where you can vote, and hopefully get more people interested so we can come to a more general consensus. We’ve also been working on improving the icons inside of LibreCAD to adopt our own unique color scheme (green) and remove non translatable text from the icons.

Beta 6 plans:

Work is continuing on Beta 6. An autosave feature is completed, and we expect the new icons, logos, and splash screen. For the future, we’re also planning on getting the help working (ported from qt3’s qassistant to qt4), but that might come after beta 6.

Community Development:

The interest in the LibreCAD project has greatly increased since Ries started it a couple months ago. To keep a project of this size sustainable, it needs constant contributions from the community. To facilitate a move to a distributed development model, we’ve started up a github repository. Future development will take place there, as will bug tracking. We’ve also set up a wiki that anyone could contribute to.

GitHub location: https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD
Issue tracking: https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/issues
Wiki: https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/wiki

For those new with github: http://help.github.com/

We’ll evaluate pull requests from anyone, and if someone shows enough interest we can give upload access to the main repository. Fork the code, fix a bug or add a feature!

We’re a community project, so we are always looking for help:

Bug reports
Participate on the forums (we need to set some up! if you’re interested in helping ries moderate and maintain the forums, reply to this post)
Translations
Bug fixing, incorporating new features
Edit and maintain the wiki
Just using and testing LibreCAD!

On a related note, check out a Spanish-speaking site for LibreCAD at: www.librecad.com.ar (thanks to Pablo “PRAR”)

Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty):

LibreCAD will be in the default Ubuntu repositories for version 11.04. You can install it from the Software Center! It will also be the default CAD for Edubuntu.

22 thoughts on “Beta 6 plans, Community Development, Ubuntu 11.04”

Daltom Designer on April 17, 2011 at 9:38 pm said:

Hola, gracias por los votos que ha recibido mi diseño, aqui envio una revision a la propuesta que previamente he diseñado solventando asi los gustos y deseos de muchos, para ver la propuesta favor hacer clic en el siguiente link:

http://daltom.2082studio.com/librecad/

Hi, thanks for the votes for my design, here sent a revision to the proposal that I have previously designed solvent and the tastes and desires of many to see the proposal please click on the following link:

http://daltom.2082studio.com/librecad/

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Daltom on April 17, 2011 at 10:35 pm said:

Hola, gracias por los votos que ha recibido mi diseño, aqui envio una revision a la propuesta que previamente he diseñado solventando asi los gustos y deseos de muchos, para ver la propuesta favor hacer clic en el siguiente link:

Hi, thanks for the votes for my design, here sent a revision to the proposal that I have previously designed solvent and the tastes and desires of many to see the proposal please click on the following link:

http://daltom.2082studio.com/librecad

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mickele on April 18, 2011 at 5:43 am said:

I prefer Redicon’s logo: simple, but impressive, and uses green color scheme!

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- daltom on April 18, 2011 at 5:52 pm said:
  
  Hola, gracias por los votos que ha recibido mi diseño, aqui envio una revision a la propuesta que previamente he diseñado solventando asi los gustos y deseos de muchos, para ver la propuesta favor hacer clic en el siguiente link:
  
  http://daltom.2082studio.com/librecad/
  
  Hi, thanks for the votes for my design, here sent a revision to the proposal that I have previously designed solvent and the tastes and desires of many to see the proposal please click on the following link:
  
  Reply ↓
  - RvT on April 24, 2011 at 10:27 am said:
    
    Diego,
    
    have you seen my mail??
    
    Ries
    
    Reply ↓
DeadlyDad on April 21, 2011 at 12:42 pm said:

As soon as I say the name of your project, my heart leapt as I had a great idea! (Though I don’t know if it would be too difficult for it to be worth it to you.)

Replace the less-than-stellar OpenOffice/LibreOffice Draw (Seriously. Just try printing a ruler with accurate 1/8″ spacing.) with LibreCAD. (Call it OO/LO NewDraw?) Create a default ‘basic mode’ layout that matches that of Draw, with the ‘advanced mode’ offering access to the full LibreCAD library as extra menu entries/items and toolbars. That would give LibreOffice a phenomenal boost.

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- RvT on April 22, 2011 at 3:55 pm said:
  
  Hey,
  
  I don’t think this will help the project a lot. The whole idea about LibreCAD is to blow a bit of live in QCad and to make sure that there is a open source CAD package available for Linux, MAX and OSX (and unix derivates).
  
  Also, there are a lot of CAD/CAM people with low end computers, that just quickly need to try something next to there CAM machine and CNC that. A light (as possible) would be better then be part at a big organization.
  
  Ries
  
  Reply ↓
Samsagax on April 23, 2011 at 6:21 pm said:

Hi there. I’m really looking forward to this project but still is too green to be a real CAD. It lacks of paperspace editing, dimensioning systems and some usability features. I’m interested in helping the project but i don’t know how or where. Please could you give me some advice? I’m an advanced student in Mechanical Engineering and want to use this software for my own work and help others with theirs.

Regards

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- Scott H on April 24, 2011 at 10:10 am said:
  
  Thanks for your interest in helping out!
  
  The code and development takes place at http://www.github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD. This project is entirely a volunteer project, so if there is a feature you’d like to implement or bug you’d like to fix, it would be much appreciated! There are lots of tutorials on the internet on how to use github to get and edit code, but if you need help I’d be happy to give more pointers.
  
  The code is C++, and best edited with Nokia’s “Qt Creator” [1,2]. After installing it, you can open “librecad.pro” which will open up the whole project for editing.
  
  You can check out all the recent commits on github to see what Ries has been up to. I know he just finished up the help system and is in the middle of adding DWG support. If that, or any other feature is interesting to you, please hop in and help.
  
  You can also help by simply filling out bug reports and feature requests as “issues” at http://www.github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD
  
  [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_Creator
  [2] http://qt.nokia.com/products/developer-tools/
  
  Reply ↓
- Scott H on April 24, 2011 at 10:20 am said:
  
  Another thing we need is someone to handle “Social Media” and the website. Ries and I are not facebook nor twitter savvy, so we’d appreciate someone who could help advertise and support that for LibreCAD.
  
  We’re also looking for someone with CMS/website experience that can work on making a site like
  http://www.libreoffice.org for LibreCAD. Right now our front page is the developer blog, we’d like a more general landing page and a forum for users to interact and get support.
  
  Reply ↓
  - Samsagax on May 9, 2011 at 10:10 pm said:
    
    Well. I’m not an experienced coder, but I’ll give a look at the code and try to figure something out. The major issue i found is the lack of paper-space editing and the dimensioning system. Not sure how to start reading the source in those areas. I’m not sure how to help in other ways, i have no facebook nor twitter, the only “social” network I’m in is a small group of GNU/Linux users in http://www.taringa.net but hardly none of them are interested in this.
    
    I’m an experienced CAD user (AutoCAD, Solidworks, CATIA etc.) but no more than that.
    
    Reply ↓
- RvT on April 24, 2011 at 10:26 am said:
  
  Sam,
  
  here is a screenshot of LibreCAD with the green icons : http://screencast.com/t/2uMTWNG4F
  It’s not ready yet, some of the icons are to big and some others are to small.
  But it’s far from really ‘green’. Pablo is trying to make a separation of the different cad systems by color, and green was still free.
  
  Ries
  
  Reply ↓
  - Scott H on April 24, 2011 at 10:33 am said:
    
    Hi Ries – by “green” he means new/immature/not-fully-developed as in a “green sapling” or “greenhorn” [1]. He’s not saying that the color is too green, which is the “branding color” of LibreCAD. Calling something that is new “green” is an idiomatic term in English.
    
    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhorn
    
    Reply ↓
    - RvT on April 24, 2011 at 11:01 am said:
      
      Ahh… I am to much into code and taken stuff to laterally like a real software engineer 😀
      
      Reply ↓
Alexandre on April 24, 2011 at 3:19 pm said:

The icons have to be aligned to pixel grid, they look blurry as hell right now. In short, I’d recommend reusing ArtLibreSet as much as possible: http://tango.freedesktop.org/ArtLibreSet

Good initiative with social coding 🙂

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Clayton Walker on April 29, 2011 at 5:48 am said:

Perhaps make icons an option that can be changed in the preferences? We have multiple icon sets now…. Because I am sure that there are people who would rather have some icons rather than others.

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João José on May 1, 2011 at 2:14 pm said:

Hello, I tried the LibreCad using Ubuntu 11.04, and I missed the option library browser. This is an important feature of QCad that I use in my designs. Without this function, I will not be able to migrate to LibreCad. I hope that the libraries will be implemented in the next release.

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- Scott H on May 1, 2011 at 5:03 pm said:
  
  Thanks – reported and tracked here:
  https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/issues/18
  
  Reply ↓
- Scott H on May 2, 2011 at 9:33 am said:
  
  Ries replied at the above link, check it out for more info. Apparently it should be available already.
  
  Reply ↓
louis vuitton on October 9, 2011 at 5:13 am said:

Ries replied at the above link, check it out for more info. Apparently it should be available already.

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Reply ↓

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