Qcad for raspberry pi

On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 01:19:57 -0000 (UTC), bob prohaska declaimed the following:

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$ sudo apt search qcad Sorting... Done Full Text Search... Done qcad/stable 2.0.5.0-1+090318.1-2 all Transitional package for QCad to LibreCAD

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$ sudo apt install qcad Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following additional packages will be installed: libmuparser2v5 librecad librecad-data The following NEW packages will be installed: libmuparser2v5 librecad librecad-data qcad

0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded. Need to get 11.1 MB of archives. After this operation, 114 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

"qcad" appears to be a dummy existing just to pull in librecad

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$ sudo apt info qcad Package: qcad Version: 2.0.5.0-1+090318.1-2 Priority: optional Section: graphics Maintainer: Debian Science Maintainers Installed-Size: 31.7 kB Depends: librecad Tag: interface::x11, role::program, scope::application, uitoolkit::qt, use::editing, works-with-format::vrml, works-with::3dmodel, x11::application Download-Size: 7,424 B APT-Sources:

buster/main armhf Packages Description: Transitional package for QCad to LibreCAD QCad has been removed from wheezy for depending on qt3 and containing non- distributable fonts, patterns, libraries, and documentation. . LibreCAD is the community-maintained qt4 port of QCad and has superseded Qcad in Debian as the package "librecad".

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$ sudo apt info librecad Package: librecad Version: 2.1.3-1.2 Priority: optional Section: graphics Maintainer: Debian Science Maintainers Installed-Size: 7,143 kB Depends: libatomic1 (>= 4.8), libc6 (>= 2.4), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.0), libgles2, libmuparser2v5 (>= 2.2.6.1+dfsg), libqt5core5a (>= 5.5.0), libqt5gui5 (>=

5.2.0), libqt5printsupport5 (>= 5.0.2), libqt5svg5 (>= 5.6.0~beta), libqt5widgets5 (>= 5.11.0~rc1), libstdc++6 (>= 5.2), librecad-data (= 2.1.3-1.2) Homepage: Download-Size: 2,262 kB APT-Sources: buster/main armhf Packages Description: Computer-aided design (CAD) system LibreCAD is an application for computer aided design (CAD) in two dimensions (2D). With LibreCAD you can create technical drawings such as plans for buildings, interiors, mechanical parts or schematics and diagrams.

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$ sudo apt search librecad Sorting... Done Full Text Search... Done librecad/stable 2.1.3-1.2 armhf Computer-aided design (CAD) system

librecad-data/stable 2.1.3-1.2 all Computer-aided design (CAD) system -- shared files

qcad/stable 2.0.5.0-1+090318.1-2 all Transitional package for QCad to LibreCAD

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$

--
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN 
	wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

Ahh, that makes sense. I already had librecad installed. so not much to be done. But, I don't see the point....librecad and qcad are in principle different animals, it seems like "bait and switch" to swap one for the other.

By way of explanation, I wanted qcad because I'd like to import a pdf into inkscape. When I tried, inkscape suggested running it through qcad first. As it happens, nothing seems to work. There's something fishy about the pdf, apparently.

Thanks for replying!

bob prohaska

>

More probably, some other package depended on qcad, and in order not to break installations of _that_, there's a transitional dummy package until that other package is updated.

Certainly my experience is that if a vaguely modern inkscape can't read a PDF then the PDF is broken in some way.

On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 22:45:46 -0000 (UTC), bob prohaska declaimed the following:

One consideration is that QCAD itself

has a $$$ "Professional" version -- and the open source portion has to have the "pro" extensions stripped from it to be validly distributed. LibreCAD was a fork of the "community edition" into which CAM control was added. That's only available in the $$$ QCAD. So the original core functions were the same for both. LibreCAD becoming an open source (partial) replacement for the professional QCAD/CAM.

Both have since been updated to use QT5.

However, the QCAD builds are for Intel/AMD processors. You'd have to download the SOURCE of the community edition and build it yourself to get an ARM version-- which also requires the build environment for QT5... And that source is what was the start of LibreCAD. (interesting, the prebuilt builds seem to use QT5 only on 64-bit Linux, the others are still QT4)

The feature list for QCAD (see above link) has EXPORT to PDF, but doesn't mention IMPORT from one. (The professional version has DWG to PDF command line batch converter).

And

doesn't mention importing a PDF either, but does mention export. However, the "manual" implies there is some capability.

{Okay -- pricing is only $$, not $$$ for single user; 33Euro for QCAD Pro,

89Euro for QCAD/CAM... Including one year of updates; but still limited to "big machines", not ARM}

--
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN 
	wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 23:06:15 -0000 (UTC), Roger Bell_West declaimed the following:

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$ sudo apt rdepends qcad qcad Reverse Depends: Recommends: ezgo-imaging pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$ sudo apt rdepends librecad librecad Reverse Depends: Recommends: education-graphics Recommends: science-engineering Depends: qcad pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$

--
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN 
	wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

Inkscape PDF import works pretty well - at least as far as the information that exists in the PDF file. You can only import one page at a time though.

Theo

The hint to try qcad appeared in an alert box while trying to import a PDF into inkscape, maybe they were referring to a "pro" version.

I did not realize that qcad was the ancestor of librecad, thanks for the history lesson. I'd like to play with inkscape because it supports HPGL pen plotters. My CAD software (Ashlar Graphite) abandoned support for pen plotters ages ago, but it does support a seemingly-wide range of export formats:

EPS type A PDF type A IGES DWG R14 DWG 2000/2002 DWG 2004/2006 DWG 2007 DWG 2008 DWG 2015 DXF R14 DXF 2000/2002 DXF 2004/2006 DXF 2007 DXF 2008 DXF 2015 PDF type B BMP TIFF ICON PBM PGM PPM XPM TGA

If I try eps or pdf, there's an error from ps2pdf and a blank page results. Ghostscript seems up-to-date, so I'm rather stuck.

If anybody following this thread has a suggestion, I'm all ears.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska