Debian or Gentoo installations.
I am an experienced cad user, recently using mainly qcad for 2-D drafting.
I was intrigued to discover RealCADD, and saw a lot of promise in its wide
feature set and ability to import dwg format (in which a lot of trade
drawings are released). After trying the demo, I decided to buy the
professional version and give it a serious examination. I have spent an
interesting few hours with it on a generic 64-bit pc, under both debian
'wheezy' in i386 mode and under gentoo in amd64 mode.
Regrettably, I am abandoning the experiment. However, I thought I should
post my summary for others who may have more time to spend ironing out
problems.
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RealCADD - A quick test
===
pro
---
- an extremely good range of drawing and editing functions
- some excellent time-saving methods
- handles polylines
- tries to optimise screen real-estate
- scripting! I have not tried it but I expect it is possible to create
parametric elements. A huge advantage. - May be a pro point for many users (I am so used to working in unscaled
model space and only scaling for the purpose of output to print that I
am unsure whether this is an advantage for me): RealCADD works in
drawing space at a predetermined scale, so you can always see where you
are on the virtual paper. The dimension tool knows the scale, of course. - It is apparently possible to have different scales on different layers,
so it should be possible to inset sections of drawing at different
scales. I have not tried this, but it is very useful if I am right.
con
---
- jumble of windows (pallets) dumped in a useless layout and hidden
under the working window. Positions chosen by the user are not saved
apparently - "pallets" not resizable, so some info invisible (eg. scale of layers
shows "1:1..." which could mean 1:100 or 1:100.000 or even 1:1.000.000!) - import of drawings from qcad (dxf format) only partial:
- all line styles, thicknesses and colours lost (at least when defined
as "by layer" -- others not tested) - most curves, particularly ellipses are displaced, rotated,
dimensionally altered.
- all line styles, thicknesses and colours lost (at least when defined
- It is possible to select a default colour for each layer (and the
defaults are successfully imported from qcad drawings too), but new
lines in the layer are all black anyway. But it is not possible to
select a default linestyle and thickness for the layer. - I do not see any way to select "all entities on layer x" so as to modify
them all at once (to correct for problem 4 above) - woeful lack of use of the right mouse button. Other CAD applications
use it to finish a command and to step back through the commands open
(usually parallel to use of the escape key). - mouse scroll wheel not adjustable for user preference. Many programs use
scroll wheel to zoom, shift-scroll for right and left, ctrl-scroll for
up and down, and it is normal to allow reconfiguration to the user's
accustomed arrangement (Gimp, Qcad, Inkscape, etc all have customisation
for this). - Even after registration, drawings cannot be saved. Saving generates:
This is apparently caused by the program trying to write to a file namedAn exception of class IOException was not handled. The application
must shut down. Exception Error Number: 2
"Saved Files 01_12_2012" (with spaces and american date order!) which is
located incorrectly in the installation directory (which will most
likely be /usr/local/realcadd/RealCADDx86). Obviously, running as an
ordinary user, this directory should not be writable, and normal usage
or the FHS would put user information in the user's home directory. The
file should probably be $HOME/.realcadd/saved-files-20120112.
The quick solution is the very undesirable chmod -R 777 {install
directory}, or if one user only is using RealCADD, chown the whole
directory. Alternatively RealCADD could be run with a user group to
which users who need to use the programme are added and appropriate
permissions changes made to the install directory. permissions problem:
the realCADD is running as user and the directories are writable, as
demonstrated also by other applications being able to write to them.
The unsaved drawing reappears on startup, together with the default
blank drawing and a complete duplicate set of tools, but the unsaved
drawing is also complete with its exception and must be closed, after
which it is completely lost. - If one does not respond promptly to an automatic backup reminder, the
application has a tendency to hang. This may be because the pop-up
window asking for confirmation of the save has disappeared behind an
active window, but sometimes it is impossible to find one, even after
searching all the virtual desktops.
=======
summary
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The above list is not complete -- a couple of hours of testing is only a
sample. Enough to show the application can be made to work. It needs some
modifications to bring it into line with FHS -- or even to make it run 'out
of the box'. It could also benefit from better documentation and some
improvements in IO and in customizability. For me, the advantages probably
do not outweigh the simplicity of qcad. It is true that qcad has lost
functionality and has become quirky and inconsistent in use with recent
"improvements", but it is simple stable and reliable and faster with
large amounts of data. RealCADD will probably remain a rather expensive
DWG-DXF converter.