OT - CAD question

[Carroll Grigsby]

On Saturday 11 September 2004 07:45 pm, James Pifer wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-09-11 at 18:42, James Pifer wrote:
> > I have some drawings an architect did for me that I would like to open
> > in some CAD program and hopefully make some modifications. The catch is
> > the architect did the drawings in Softcad (I believe version 11). My
> > understanding in that this version could not export to dwg.
> >
> > The files he sent me have an spd extension. Anyone know of any way of
> > getting these opened or converted to another format? Any CAD program on
> > Linux be able to open them? Right now I have no specific CAD program
> > running on my Redhat or Fedora machines. A "free" one would be
> > preferable.
> >
> > Being an off topic question replies can be sent to me directly if anyone
> > has any ideas.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > James
>
> Sorry, that was Softplan, not SoftCAD....
>
> James


James:
I'm not familiar with either Softplan or .spd files, but I have had a lot of 
experience with the problem of incompatible CAD file formats. Most CAD 
programs offer the option of exporting to something other than their native 
format; the most popular seems to be .dxf. If Softplan has that capability, 
then you should be able to view and modify them in QCad (although bear in 
mind that these conversions almost always involve some compromises). QCad is 
a free Linux application. It is somewhat limited in that it only does 2D, 
many people have found it useful and not unnecessarily complex to use. It can 
be found here:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html

If .dxf doesn't fly, there may be other workarounds such as .pdf, HPGL, etc.

Ah, the joy of incompatible propietary file formats...

-- cmg