Archimedes (CAD)


Archimedes – "The Open CAD" – is a computer-aided design program being developed with direct input from architects and architecture firms. With this design philosophy, the developers hope to create software better suited for architecture than the currently widely used AutoCAD, and other available CAD software. The program is free software released under the Eclipse Public License.

Features

Archimedes uses its own XML-based open format, which resembles SVG. It does not yet include support for other :Category:CAD file formats|CAD formats, but DXF support is planned.

Development

Archimedes is written in Java, and the latest version runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux/Unix based systems, and might run on platforms that have are supported by LWJGL and a Java Virtual machine on version 1.5.0 or later.

History

The Archimedes Project started as a collaboration between a group of programmers and architecture students at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, in 2005. The project is currently being worked on as free and open source software. There is a team of students from the University working on it as collaborators under the coordination of Hugo but everyone is free to contribute with plugins and/or patches.

Timeline

A migration to the Eclipse Rich Client Platform in versions 0.5x has greatly improved the user interface model and stability, but some of the functionality from the last pre-RCP version is still being transferred. Version 0.58.0 moved this process a step closer by adding trimming, leader, svg and pdf exporting.