First, some clarification: although this is my third post about Bricscad already, I do intend to talk about other software on this blog, and obviously free and open source software!

In my two previous posts I talked about Bricscad, an AutoCAD clone which shares with its counterpart a similar UI (in classic mode if compared to AutoCAD 2009 & 2010), its command line, and uses the DWG format natively. Bricscad has the advantage of price over AutoCAD, selling for a fraction of an AutoCAD licence. Bricscad V10 Pro, which supports 3D ACIS solids, is even cheaper than the 2D-only AutoCAD LT. This comes at a price though, as it lags AutoCAD in performance and features.

These are my thoughts after reviewing Alpha releases 10.3.4 and 10.3.6. As I had already created numerous screenshots of the 10.3.4 release, I chose to use them unchanged in this post since the 10.3.6 release does not show any major cosmetic change. Only five of these screenshots are shown here, but you can find a link to an image gallery at the end of the post, where the whole set of eighteen is available.

Installation

There is no direct download link to the Alpha release on Bricsys' website: one has to visit the Bricscad For Linux support forum where release announcements are posted (I posted the direct link to Alpha 10.3.6 in my previous blog post). Creating an account is required to download; an email address and some personal info need to be supplied. The program archive (a 47MB ZIP file) is compatible with 32 and 64-bit systems. Once the dowload is complete, there is no installation needed. Just extract the archive in a directory with full read/write access to the user. The easiest way is to extract to the home folder. Then open a terminal, browse to the extracted Bricscad folder, and run the command '/bin/sh bricscad.sh'. Those allergic to the command line may want to follow the tip in post #41 of this forum thread to create a launcher that can be placed on the desktop or in the Applications menu.

My review has been done on Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" 64-bit, with GNOME 2.28 desktop environment.

Use

At launch, a popup window warns that this is a time-limited development release. The 10.3.4 release expired on February 28th, and release 10.3.6 will remain active till March 31, 2010.

Then the Bricscad application launches, and AutoCAD users will feel almost at home. A closer look will reveal some differences: icons aren't the same (this may not be disconcerting, as AutoCAD's icon set usually changes completely every two or three releases! ), the Object Property window is docked to the right instead of to the left of the model window; but a look inside the menus or in the About window will confirm this is not AutoCAD.

The Open Drawing window is typical to the GNOME desktop; by contrast, on Bricscad for Windows installed through Wine, we are greeted with a Windows File open window (see the image gallery for comparison). This is due to Bricscad For Linux's UI being designed with wxWidgets, an open source widget toolkit that uses the platform's native API to give the application a truely native look and feel.

What's missing is a drawing preview, and I hope that it is implemented in the final release. I think it should be relatively easy, since most graphics apps like GIMP or Eye of Gnome already have this feature.

One thing I was eager to test was display performance. Although the Windows version of Bricscad can be installed with Wine and has been working surprisingly well since the V8 version, it suffers agonizingly slow pans and zooms on files as small as 750KB. So I did a quick comparison between Bricscad for Linux Alpha and Bricscad V10 for Windows running under Wine 1.1.38, by using a 2.4MB DWG file (found here, I hope it is free of rights).

The test results are quite satisfactory: the file loads in 2 seconds, and pan & zoom seem as quick as on Windows. With the Windows version running in Wine, it took 3 minutes to open the file on my Athlon64 X2 3GHz home PC, and pan & zooms operations froze the app for a whole 30 seconds. However this result may not be entirely relevant, since the release notes indicate that the Alpha is running a temporary graphics engine. One hint to that effect is that complex 3D solids don't show properly, as can be seen in the screenshot below: this 3D electric guitar model, which I downloaded years ago from the internet, barely shows in wireframe (see the image gallery to compare how the guitar is displayed in Bricscad for Windows in Wine and in Windows XP).

One notable change from the Windows version is the addition of tabs to allow fast switching between opened files at the top left of the model window. (First introduced by the Opera web browser, this feature has quickly found its way in many apps; one could say it was the inspiration for the Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon. :-P) These tabs are not to be confused with the traditional Model and Layouts tabs usually found at the bottom: those are still used. But there's a bug that prevents them from showing reliably; they may appear while some tool is active, but then disappear as soon as the model window refreshes. Such bugs are to be expected at such an early stage of development.

The toolbar icons appear to be slightly bigger than in the Windows version (I like that). But it causes the "Entity Snaps" toolbar to exceed the border of the Bricscad window, set here at 1280 pixels wide.

Basic drawing and editing tools are functional: I tested LINE, ARC, CIRCLE, RECTANGLE, POLYLINE, ELLIPSE, TRIM and EXTEND. "Entity Snaps" work as well. Multiline text mostly works, except for text height entry and stacked text. TTF fonts are not rendered well. What does not work: hatching and dimensioning, or toolbar flyouts. (Edit: Hatch now works with 10.3.6, Gradient does too, but the color picker window OK button has no effect. Colors can be edited later through the Properties Bar where the color picker responds fine. Hatching and gradient are associative by the way!)

As for supported file formats, R11 to R2007 DWGs can be opened and saved, R9 to R2007 DXFs can be saved but oddly not opened at the moment. (I just now realized that Bricscad does not supports DWG and DXF as old as R2.5 anymore, I wonder when that changed?)

Conclusion

Even if the software is unstable and unsuited for real work, testing it was an interesting experience, one that I will surely repeat with the upcoming releases. It's a rare opportunity to be allowed to monitor a commercial software's development in its early stage. To borrow from Bricsys' words, the Linux world has been waiting for a professional DWG-based CAD solution for years, and this need will, finally, soon be filled. But Bricsys is taking a big gamble: considering that the Linux world owns a marginal share of the desktop market, and that it has deep roots in free and open source software, will this commercial product find consumers? Will the corporate world and individuals take this opportunity to convert their Windows desktops to Linux ones? That would be an interesting shift, one I wouldn't mind seeing happen.

To look at some more Bricscad for Linux screenshots, please visit my image gallery. I spent much time creating it! :-)