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I work at a GIS SaaS company and we use QCAD for our services. I always appriciate that they offer commercial licenses at a low price. A few things about QCAD:
by kbumsik 4y ago
I work at a GIS SaaS company and we use QCAD for our services. I always appriciate that they offer commercial licenses at a low price.
A few things about QCAD:
1. The coolest feature is its CLI [1] and it runs beautifully on Linux/macOS/Windows. We use it for CAD to Tile map conversion and metadata extraction in our backend.
2. It looks like the rendering engine is single-threaded and does not support GPU acceleration. So watch out opening a complex CAD file.
3. There are some compatibility issues with AutoCAD files, especially Hatch. But it mostly works great.
[1]: https://www.qcad.org/en/products/qcad-command-line-tools https://www.qcad.org/en/products/qcad-command-line-tools
- robomartin 4y agoI just bought a QCAD CAD/CAM license to have around. We have AutoCAD as well as DraftSight. I am happy to support this effort, particularly at such a low cost. The CAM and nesting part might actually find immediate use driving our laser cutting/engraving machine. I haven't installed it yet, will play with it tomorrow. Any clone or alternative to AutoCAD eventually has to implement LISP support. DraftSight has it. We have fairly extensive AutoLISP code that turns ACAD into quite a powerful tool for the right type of job. The codebase was developed for the design and construction of large technical installations where you have to manage thousands of cables of different types, calculate lengths, produce wiring lists, labels, etc.
- brailsafe 4y agoWhat aspect of GIS work has crossover with CAD?
- app4soft 4y agoAny WYSIWYG GIS app (as software) is a sorta of WYSIWYG CAD apps.
- gehsty 4y agoGIS is CAD but on a projection system instead of a perfectly flat 2D plane.
- kbumsik 4y agoCAD is used for architecture and civil engineering. Specifically we need to map a civil drawing (CAD file) to something like Google Map. You can easily see the use case from our competitior website: https://www.propelleraero.com https://www.propelleraero.com
- Enginerrrd 4y agoAs a civil engineer: Essentially ALL of my CAD work basically is GIS. Only architectural drawings which are a tiny fraction of Civil drawings are an exception to that rule. Civil3D is basically the industry standard and it is a GIS software. We import many different GIS files into every drawing: property lines, jurisdicitons, roads, pipe networks, streams, topography etc. You have to be a little careful when incorporating survey data (ground vs grid issues). Then we draw onto various state plane projected coordinate systems. Creating pipe networks, road corridors, 3D grading and surfaces. There's a bunch of analysis that comes out of that work as well. The beauty of Civil3d is that much of the analysis can be done IN the drawing. For obvious reasons that saves a lot of time.
- brailsafe 4y agoThat sounds like very interesting work and powerful software. I'm a little educated in other GIS software like QGIS and Arc, but don't have a true engineering background by any stretch. CAD work with integrated real world GIS data seems like it would be novel
- Enginerrrd 4y agoSo civil3D is really just a bunch of tool palettes on top of AutoCAD. Autodesk AutoCAD is a difficult to believe behemoth. It's like 40 year old software that NEVER EVER deprecates anything ever and runs lisp routines and all manner of things. It interoperates with dozens of other software packages, with hundreds of 3rd party add-ons. It supports a number of APIs for customization and automation. ncluding AutoLISP, Visual LISP, VBA, .NET and ObjectARX. People literally make whole careers just out of learning the ins and outs of civil3d.
- brailsafe 4y agoSeems like it would be a crazy nightmare/dream codebase to work on depending on where you get your kicks.