[PythonCAD] Looking for DXF help

[Steve Hall]

From: Eric Wilhelm, Tue Feb 10 21:04:48 2004
> by Steve Hall, Tuesday 10 February 2004 05:44 pm:
> >
> > I have a GPL [expensive, proprietary]CAD script project that is
> > getting ready to release, and it will maintain links to the tons of
> > helpful GPL projects I continue to find. (Like PythonCAD.)
> > 
> > The OpenDWG project is as closed source as it can be, and I don't
> > know if I've ever found a single clearinghouse for reverse
> > engineering the .DWG or .DXF doc formats. If Free CAD software is
> > ever going to make a dent in the market, we need to organize a bit
> > better, and collect information a bit more centrally.
> 
> I'd love to see this central information collection.
> 
> If you aren't on the cad-linux mailing list, you might want to go
> through the archives, and phrostie's page
> http://www.freelists.org/webpage/cad-linux
> http://www.freelists.org/webpage/cad-linux-dev
> http://pfrostie.freeservers.com/cad-tastrafy/

Yup, seen those. Unfortunately, some of us are going to be stuck on
proprietary systems for a while longer, which is where our project
will come in, sort of a way to introduce Open Source to the masses.
Which leads me to something a bit more on topic for this list...

Has anyone here ever written extensions for A___CAD using Python? I've
heard some stand-alone/static binaries could be compiled for Win32
from Python, but is this crazy talk? Of course, ALisp can run and
return from binaries, but is this reasonable?

I'm itching to get into Python, and writing tools which could be
reused across CAD packages (like the thread-starting DXF inquiry)
would make a *huge* amount of sense if it helps us all migrate some
day.


-- 
Steve Hall  [ digitect at mindspring.com ]