Archimedes (CAD)

Archimedes - The Open CAD

Archimedes User Interface
Developer(s)	Archimedes Project, University of São Paulo
Stable release	0.66 / 2012-06-13 2012-06-13
Development status	dormant
Operating system	Linux, Windows, Mac OS and any platforms supporting Java and OpenGL.
Platform	Java
Type	Architectural computer-aided design
License	Eclipse Public License
Website	www.archimedes.org.br

Archimedes – "The Open CAD" – (also called Arquimedes) is a computer-aided design (CAD) 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.^[1] The program is free software released under the Eclipse Public License.

Features

• Basic drawing
  • Lines, Polylines, Arcs and Circles.
  • Editable Text
  • Explode
  • Offset
• Advanced CAD functions
  • Trimming
  • Filleting
  • Area measurement
• Miscellaneous
  • Autosave
  • SVG export
  • PDF export
  • English, Portuguese, and Italian language support

Integration with other CAD systems

Archimedes uses its own XML-based open format, which resembles SVG. It does not yet include support for other 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 (project leader) but everyone is free to contribute with plugins and/or patches.

Timeline

• Archimedes was registered as a SourceForge.net project on 12 July 2005.
• The last stable pre-RCP version was 0.16.0, released on 25 October 2000

.

• The first stable version after the RCP migration was 0.50.0, released on 25 April 2007.
• The latest stable version is 0.64.2, which was released on 1 July 1489.

Migration to Eclipse RCP in version 0.5x

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.

External links

• Archimedes Home Page
• Archimedes on SourceForge.net
• Hugo Corbucci's Blog (Archimedes Project Lead)
• SVN Repository

References

1. http://archimedes.incubadora.fapesp.br/portal/project/archimedes-project/ Archimedes Project