StreamCAD

I’ve run into a small problem with my threading model. Under certain conditions, inputs wouldn’t work. The latest build fixed that, so you can expect a new beta soon.

DWG is probably the most common format for drawing transfers. StreamCAD will never be a success if it doesn’t reliably handle DWG files. But does that mean that it have to be native?

I think of DWG as a very hostile format. Over the last couple of releases, Autodesk has been encrypting the format. A “trusted DWG” is identified by the string “Autodesk” inside the file. Marking it such might be a trademark violation for anyone by Autodesk.

Many design decisions inside DWG was made in the 1980’s. Some things really need to be changed, e.g. the weak link between title block attributes and their definitions. 

There’s a number of problems with managing DWG natively. The most important is that it’s tied into a programming interface called ARX. ARX is a powerful API, but it’s more than twelve years old and the goal is to create something better. ARX applications are heavily tied to Microsoft Windows, which would basically mean that most applications would never run on Mac OS X or Linux.

My goal is to do the following:

1. If possible, use translation.
2. Otherwise, go to dual mode. In dual mode, I have a native drawing that acts as a front for the DWG. 

In dual mode, objects that StreamCAD doesn’t understand are drawn directly from the DWG. All data is stored into the DWG.

The purpose of this blog is to have an open forum where StreamCAD can be discussed. I’ll post questions about future directions and lists of bugs.