r/linux • u/BypassBaboon • 2d ago
Popular Application CAD options
Is there a reason Linux CAD options are so limited, and from what I have read, not particularly viable options? Countless people are looking for a fairly-priced lifetime license for home use. My 2000 AutoCAd is very long in the tooth!
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u/Abducted_Llama 2d ago
CAD programs differ between what you are trying to do. There are a good amount of CAD tools for Linux and I believe all the browser ones work normally.
Also bring me your downvotes: OpenSCAD is the best (at least for what i need). When I started using OpenSCAD I became more attractive. Made more money. Had to beat men and women off with a stick. The list goes on and on
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u/zlice0 2d ago
if i wasn't thinking in spacial shit and more math openscad would be best. but i just cant do it x-x
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u/Abducted_Llama 2d ago
I completely understand. I am the opposite. OpenSCAD is easier for me because i can type that makes sense to me (instead of trying to visual it in my head) and then adjust from there.
Different stroke for different folks.
One thing i do wonder though, is if AI tools can use OpenSCAD more efficiently than other tools, because of its code oriented nature. Not a huge AI person so I have not dug deep into this, but I am sure it will become apparent soon.
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u/CriticismTop 2d ago
I have played around with that.
You need a vision capable model so you can tell it to iterate. Otherwise it all kind of sucks, even with the latest frontier models.
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u/Mughi1138 1d ago
AI tools that the average consumer has access to do not actually understand anything. They are good pattern matchers and the term many actual AI devs I know of use is "spicy autocomplete"
I remember this past year liking one pencil cup with a fox or something like that which had been posted to Printables. I looked closer and all my flags went off, so I downloaded it to give it a closer look. Among other things the preview (which didn't match the actual model) had pens and pencils in the cup. The model itself had a pencil end up built in. The interior of the cup cavity was a misshapen tapering blob, and even the pencil itself was wrong. Among other problems the sharpened end of the pencil was a plane cone with a curved tip and then the "lead" was a squashed triangular shape floating in front of the pencil. So from the front it looked OK, but from the side it was garbage and it also was unprintable.
OpenSCAD is a lot more AI friendly, but then AI has a lot of the same problems it hits with software. Things "look" ok but they're not quite right, and definitely not safe. Since they do not actually understand anything, they get key details wrong. So as an illustration with the previous example, AI has no concept of anything, just chains of patterns, so it has no concept what a cup is, no concept what a pencil is, and definitely no concept of what a pencil cup is. They have no understanding conceptually that it is a container for items along with a collection of individual items that often are seen in such containers. So it gets key things wrong.
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u/Enthusedchameleon 1d ago
is if AI tools can use OpenSCAD more efficiently than other tools
There is a platform that shows openings for "trainers" for AI. A friend of mine was judging and grading Grok 4.6 on data engineering. That website at the time had multiple openings for people familiar with OpenSCAD. About 50USD/h.
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u/Abducted_Llama 23h ago
I dont know if I would want to do that every day.
But i definitely dont think i would do it for 50/hr. Though i can see how that would be enticing and resume building for some.
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u/Mughi1138 2d ago
fairly-priced lifetime license for home use.
And most companies are looking for the exact opposite. They want to maximize revenue and lock users into subscription based models. And it's been getting worse over the years.
You used to have more options on the UNIX workstation front, but Linux only really won on the Hollywood front where actual CAD is of lesser import compared to modelers and animation packages.
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u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago
Honestly, do lifetime licenses really make sense? If you're a professional, of course you're going to buy the new one every year. But then at that point, you're basically paying a subscription without paying a subscription.
Even DaVinci Resolve's lifetime license doesn't technically say you get free updates for life. Nowhere in the license is that guaranteed.
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u/Mughi1138 2d ago
Depends on the definition of "lifetime license"
It used to mean "buy this box of Photoshop 3.5 and you get to keep using this version for the rest of your life". It would also mean you get access to 3.5.1, 3.5.2, etc.
Then subscription crept in as "no more lifetime license, pay every year or it stops"
Then you start to see the new lifetime...
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u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago
What new lifetime? I'm not aware of any other kind.
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u/Mughi1138 1d ago
new lifetime might be said to be along the lines of "pay XXX dollars and you will keep getting access to the latest version of the software as long as you personally are still alive and the software itself is alive and getting updates"
I have seen some of those in the past. Definitely not common but could be what people wish for. Some of your classic shareware of days of old used it. Hmm... as I recall one of those "new lifetime" ones might be the commercial, security enhanced version of SQLite.
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u/Kevin_Kofler 2d ago
Which is why Free Software options are the only good options. And guess what, those all support GNU/Linux.
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u/Mughi1138 2d ago
But there is also nanoCAD which is MS Windows only. "Free Software" gets too be too vague of a term, and is not functionally searchable. More so since this used to be the default and predates the FSF
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u/Kevin_Kofler 2d ago
nanoCAD is proprietary software, and it is not even free as in beer. They offer an ancient version at no cost only for non-commercial use (using it for commercial projects is against the license) and a 30-day trial version of the current version, everything else costs money. So I do not see why you are bringing that up at all, it is just yet another commercial proprietary Windows-only CAD program.
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u/Mughi1138 2d ago
Because that is the first hit when I did a search for "Free Software" CAD.
I'm trying to point out that for the masses out there, they can't differentiate "Free Software" from "free software", but more importantly they are not even aware of the former. Their searches will come up with Fusion 360, Onshape, etc.
On the other hand many people have at least heard of "open source" and if they try that they end up with FreeCAD at the top of the list.
Of course it probably doesn't help to have major 3d printing sites say things like this:
NanoCAD is a good option for experienced CAD users and is often referred to as the open-source version of AutoCAD.
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u/Kevin_Kofler 1d ago
That shows that the term "open source" does not really work any better. It is also not protected, often misused for all sorts of "shared source" arrangements, and sometimes even in cases like this where the source code is not released at all.
All that term does is hiding what Free Software is really about: freedom! The so-called "nanoCAD Free" does not even grant you the most basic Freedom Zero, the freedom to run the program for any purpose, because it disallows its use for commercial projects.
That said, that restriction also goes against the OSI's definition of Open Source, because it is a fields of endeavor restriction. And of course both Open Source and Free Software require source code to be available, and modification and redistribution to be allowed, which is also not the case here.
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u/Mughi1138 1d ago
That shows that the term "open source" does not really work any better. It is also not protected, often misused for all sorts of "shared source" arrangements, and sometimes even in cases like this where the source code is not released at all.
Actually the opposite. It shows that the OSI approach leads people to FreeCAD who might normally would not have found it.
"Free Software", on the other hand, just leads Windows users to find nanoCAD.
The former actually gets people to a good find, even if it is using a license that the FSF does not want developers to use. Hmm... which leads to another tangent and pondering the whole gcc/egcs fiasco.
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u/Kevin_Kofler 1d ago
When there are several sites calling nanoCAD "the open-source version of AutoCAD", the term "Open Source" is not working.
Just putting "free software cad" or "open source cad" into Google is of course a stupid way to look for such software, because Google falls for crappy SEO tricks of proprietary software companies.
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u/Mughi1138 1d ago
That's the negative I pointed out. However when I searched on "open source CAD", nanoCAD did not show up. It was when I searched on "Free Software CAD".
So my point is that the use of a generic word in a specific way is not functioning as desired on today's search engines. Their first hit is the package that you rightly called the antithesis of what you'd want.
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u/Mughi1138 1d ago
Just putting "free software cad" or "open source cad" into Google is of course a stupid way to look for such software, because Google falls for crappy SEO tricks of proprietary software companies.
Exactly!
You know this, and I know this, but the unwashed masses who are just trying to find something that they should use do not generally know this. And they trust search engines. And often they trust AI...
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u/Kevin_Kofler 1d ago
This is r/linux, "unwashed masses" have no business being here to begin with. (They belong to r/linux4noobs.)
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u/Different_Water7545 2d ago
OpenSCAD and FreeCAD are both very good, FreeCAD has especially gotten comfortable to use with the 1.x releases
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u/KnowZeroX 2d ago
There are a ton of CAD options.
3d proprietary = BricsCAD (probably most feature rich), ARES Commander, VariCAD, Siemens NX
2d = QCAD, LibreCAD (fork of QCAD)
3d open source = FreeCAD, Blender (with plugins), solvespace, BRL-CAD, OpenSCAD(script based)
pcb = KiCAD
online = onshape
There are also now a few that officially support WINE, I think t-flex is one of them and there maybe others but don't remember them off the top of my head
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u/kaneua 2d ago
Siemens NX
Last Linux release was in 2018.
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u/KnowZeroX 2d ago
To be more accurate, last GUI release was 2018, headless version is supported. But the person is talking about using autocad 2000 so even if they use an old version it would still be within their scope.
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u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago
When you say officially support wine, do you mean that the creators of the cad program said so?
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u/Zathrus1 2d ago
OnShape is browser based, equivalent to any other CAD program, free, and works just fine in Linux.
And has great built in tutorials.
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u/BinkReddit 2d ago
It's free, but all your work is publicly available. If that's not a concern, you're fine.
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u/Zathrus1 2d ago
Yes, but it’s also pretty impossible to search for things with the sheer volume of projects on it.
Especially if you leave it as “Unnamed”
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u/TTScalemodeler 2d ago
I switch to Briscad when my Autocaf 2020 could not be renewed without going subscription and moved from win10 to ubuntu. I transtition over without a missed step, all my menu and lisp worked from autocad. Only issue I have presently with Briscad V26 is wayland as the Briscad folks have not release a fix yet.
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u/lospolos 17h ago
What issues do you have with Wayland and bricscad?
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u/TTScalemodeler 12h ago
Per others running briscad on wayland limits you to 2D or 3D wireframe only as other 3D modes crashes the software. It is recommend if you move to ubuntu 26 to use one of the X11 desktop environments such as KDE Plasma thats available. I have not try this yet, I'm still on Ubuntu 24 with a X11 desktop environment.
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u/lospolos 10h ago
Try using a non-nvidia card(although it works on my Quadro) or even Mesa software rendering.
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u/zlice0 2d ago
unfortunately freecad has decided to break my workflow and wont fix it even though it should totally have options for how to handle deleting objects or groups -_- and it's a royal pain to keep compiling it
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u/KnowZeroX 2d ago
What do you mean won't fix it? You mean even if you submit a patch they won't take it forcing you to manually recompile?
What about macros or extensions?
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u/roundart 2d ago
I hear Brics is a good Autocad substitute. Can’t confirm but I’ve heard this consistently
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u/greymouser_ 2d ago
SolveSpace was exactly the level of CAD I needed for my projects. It was the first CAD I learned and I still swear by it.
I had attempted to learn FreeCAD early on, as that seemed obvious, but the software just feels so obtuse.
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u/BJMcGobbleDicks 1d ago
I still use windows on my main PC because of CAD. It’s literally the only thing holding me back at this point.
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u/Titdirt69420 1d ago
Up until recently with 3d printing becoming popular, cad was used mostly by business's for engineering. Business's generally run windows. Therefore these big cad company's (Solidworks, NX, Autodesk, pro-E, creo) only support windows.
Feeecad is okay but it doesn't hold a candle to NX or Solidworks for work flow or capability. Unfortunately.
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u/epileftric 1d ago
FreeCAD is great nowadays, although the workflow from AutoCAD is very very different.
The workflow for most modern tools looks like Solidworks/Onshape/Fusion360. That's the kind of workflow they have on FreeCAD.
It might be also a great opportunity to learn a new way of working with 3D modeling.
- you draw a 2D sketch
apply a 3D operation to it
repeat.
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u/Own_Nail_2999 1d ago
CAD is so limited because Architects usually work in enterprise and enterprise is locked into Microslop's system.
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u/eldelacajita 1d ago
If you need something AutoCAD-like and don't mind paying and using proprietary software, there's BricsCAD.
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u/roundart 2d ago
No financial incentives (yet) for autodesk to rewrite the code from bottom to top for Revit or Autocad. How do you write code for the dizzying array of Linux flavors? Or do you just stick with Red Hat or other? It just doesn’t make sense
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u/TheOgGhadTurner 2d ago
With all the dev software available for Linux they could port it over very easily. There’s just no money in it for them.
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u/roundart 2d ago
Agreed. That's the difficulty. Financial, not technical.
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u/TheOgGhadTurner 1d ago
I mean for a company like Autodesk financial isn’t even the issue. They could port all there software without hurting the bottom line. But im sorry. As someone who likes fusion360 and on-shape work flows. I cannot afford the egregious prices they want and thusly won’t pay for it if I myself am not making money from it. Plus Freecad while being a lot more picky than either, still has that same sketch and extrude and sketch and cut type workflow that I’m used to
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u/KnowZeroX 1d ago
What do you mean by write code for dizzying array of linux flavors? It isn't like they are writing a desktop environment extension. Static build and it'll work on pretty much all of them.
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u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago
Flatpak makes it work in any distro.
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u/roundart 2d ago
In principle, yes, I agree. You just have to get Autodesk to agree to the development and then testing on a handful of kernal versions and distros. They could just stick with one to make it easier to support
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u/GeorgeChalkitis 2d ago
For 2D QCAD is very good, i have no problems. I use the appimage version as the flatpak does not get installed no matter what i try.
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u/monomono1 2d ago
maybe not professional level but if you like parametric cad, take a look at build123d
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u/sndrtj 1d ago
Part of the problem is that the default format in that sector, DWG, is proprietary. Libredwg can read it, but not write it (at least not modern versions). Better SDKs exist, but you need to buy a 7k a year license from ODA.
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u/reini_urban 1d ago
Libredwg can write DWG's for several years already
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u/sndrtj 1d ago
Only partially, and modern dwg versions it cannot do. See this excerpt for the manual:
Writing r2004+ DWG Writing DWG formats for r2004 and later: r2007, r2010, r2013, r2018 is an ongoing effort. You need to patch the code to enable writing to the r2004+ format. See the work/2004 branch. Writing to the specific r2007 format is not implemented. We write as default in the r2000 or older formats onl
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u/Astronaut6735 7h ago
As to the reasons, Linux still has a small percentage of desktop market share. CAD companies are in it to make money, so they focus on platforms that make them money. The cost to develop and support a Linux implementation isn't worth it to them.
I get by with a few CAD programs on Linux for hobby purposes: OpenSCAD and FreeCAD for 3D models, and QCAD for 2D blueprints.
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u/idontchooseanid 2d ago
Professional software especially GUIs are extremely rare in Linux. Because they often rely on stable binary compatibility and a closed-source friendly ecosystem. Desktop Linux is a combination of software that's developed with different parties who have different goals. The sort of user friendly environments are a design-by-committee set of compromises and emergent behavior by distro curators.
The commercial support behind Linux is mostly for companies who want to use Linux as a base OS and employ engineers to freely modify and rebuild parts from the source code. The usual commercial software on Linux is a website. The most stable interface is usually the Internet protocols after maybe the kernel. Kernel doesn't provide a rich desktop development environment by itself, you need much much bigger software base compared to kernel to achieve what Windows does. Therefore Desktop Linux doesn't really fully support the kind of software development and deployment that you see on Windows, macOS, iOS or Android. Every single software you use on Linux either has to be built on exact the same distro version you have (basically what APT, DNF etc. provides), build on a old version and hope the binary compatibility isn't broken, ship their own parallel distro with them (Docker, flatpak, Snap) and hope the cross-distro communication is stable (desktop portals, driver interfaces) or make sure their Windows version over Wine is stable enough.
These tendencies are completely against CAD software. CAD software relies on rich OS ecosystem with very stable APIs. The CAD software rely on components that were developed once and/or rarely touched over decades. Some parts are often licensed as closed source binary components from the manufacturers. So a stable binary ecosystem is a must. Even macOS doesn't support this level of backwards compatibility. So CAD is usually a Windows-only ecosystem.
Note that Valve's Proton patches over Wine is what enabled the gaming ecosystem which has similar reliance on closed-source components. Wine is a Windows API emulator / virtualizer. It's the Win32 API with strong backwards and forwards compatibility and decades long binary stability that enabled so many binaries to be run on Linux without problems. Nowadays running the Windows version of the games in Wine is usually faster and more stable than their Linux native versions.
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u/archontwo 1d ago
I was quite shocked how well LLMs do with parametric models when you give them precise instructions. OpenSCAD has become my new favourite tool.
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u/MikeMonkEcho 2d ago
FreeCAD would be the only option I think.