Ok I admit,
I shamelessly copied the title from this excellent article http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/whats-up-with-dwg-adoption-in-free-software If you are interested why we don’t have DWG support in LibreCAD, then the article is a perfect read for you.
Alexandro did very deep research on the subject and wrote the article, thumbs up!
Now go and read that article!
This is false,
enough to create plugins (released under GPLv2) that load code of LibreDWG dynamically or if you are not able you can create a plugin released under LGPL.
Why continue to ask for change license when you do not need to change? Sure, create plugin interfaces can be difficult, but certainly not impossible.
If you do not want to create their own plugin why not contact the RibbonSoft to ask them to change the license? (this was deliberately polemical, I’m sorry)
LibDWG and LibreDWG are released under GPLv3 and any lather version, I do not see where is the problem about it.
In any case LibreCAD and FreeCAD are just two of many project CAD free, I don’t see why you should change the license only to save the trouble of creating two plugins.
Sorry, I did not trigger flame, best regards,
Paolo
paolo,
our project is for free software only, while qcad/ribonsoft is not. Therefore, any suggestion about what qcad/ribonsoft should/could do is not relevant to LibreCAD, and should be directed to qcad/ribonsoft only.
Ries/Rallaz may have already spent way more than 40 extra hours on bringing up DWG support without success, due to the GPLv3+ status of libreDWG. LibreCAD could not have done more here.
Right now, we are planning on SVG support. Supporting DWG is still too expensive for us.
dli
Paolo,
creating a plugin interface a quite a bit of work and having LibreDWG released as GPLv2 or higher is a lot easer for us (I mean A LOT). I could get LibreDWG getting linked with LibreCAD in a matter of hours to get some basic entities loaded in.
If we need to create a plugin interface it would take 40+ hours, properly even more when doing it correctly. Don’t forget that this is all done in spare time, nobody get’s paid for the work we do on LibreCAD and any time we can save is time that can be spend on other areas of LibreCAD.
Fortunately, Rallaz has started work on the plugin interface, but it’s not yet enough to support loading and saving of drawings.
We have been contacting Ribbonsoft, but for obvious reasons they are not willing to change the license of the original QCad code because QCad is there sales product. So we are stuck with GPLv2 for now.
I’m sorry for my English, but I say:
— what will give dwg-support?
— nothing.
below will explain why.
– Why you need dwg-support???
– To get users of other (proprietary) software.
Implementation of the ‘dwg-support’ coming this project to this: full compatibility with other software will not.
files from AutoCAD will open in librecad with a buggy.
At the same time, the librecad-files will be displayed incorrectly in AutoCAD (and other *-cad).
I am using (with varying success) qcad \ librecad from 2007. mainly develop small schemes for construction workers (I’m an engineer for thermal insulation). for my work it nearly enough.
but my fellow architects, for whom * cad is the main instrument from morning to night, terribly lacking functionality librecad.
the fact that they are important speed – and this is closely related to the functionality of the application.
a shortage of the basic functions:
– Automatic snap
– The possibility to assign keyboard shortcuts to various commands
– Editing, creating, destination of styles to objects (the ability to adjust the parameters for drawing standards, modify
dimension lines and arrows, etc.)
– (Then you can implement support for dwg)
– In the future – built-in language
and once again return to dwg.
If librecad will have a normal feature, you can go to him and without a dwg.
Nothing prevented me to convert my dwg-projects (by the way, from stolen proprietary CAD – I live in one of the post-Soviet countries) in dxf, and then then finish them in a qcad.
PS Many house-developers of my country would have gladly switched to free software, instead of sitting, fear, and wait for them to come 🙂
and in recent years come more often.
Thank you for your attention.
and again sorry for my english …
Thanks for your words!
We do know that LibreCAD is used in countries where there is no $$ to buy proprietary software (I live in such country myself), therefor it’s import for us to keep LibreCAD free. Personally I wouldn’t say that DWG support is upmost important, but a very nice to have so users like you don’t have to use software to do the DWG conversion and be able to exchange drawings freely.
– Automatic snap will be coming with LibreCAD 2.0
Currently we are thinking and putting out ideas what LibreCAD 3 (it will hopefully be a full re-write) will look like and what it’s capabilities should be and we will put up a list of features we want to implement later this year and ask for our users input and decide what is important and not.
We do know already that the following items are important:
1) Theming, create and use your own icons
2) Scripting support by means of Python for example
3) Create your own keyboard maps shortcuts and command line entries
Ries