GNOME 3591 Published by

The twenty-ninth development release of PythonCAD, a CAD package for open-source software users, is available



As the name implies, PythonCAD is written entirely in Python. The goal of this project is to create a fully scriptable drafting program that will match and eventually exceed features found in commercial CAD software. PythonCAD is released under the GNU Public License (GPL).

PythonCAD requires Python 2.2 or newer. The interface is GTK 2.0 based, and uses the PyGTK module for interfacing to GTK. The design of PythonCAD is built around the idea of separating the interface from the back end as much as possible. By doing this, it is hoped that both GNOME and KDE interfaces can be added to PythonCAD through usage of the appropriate Python module. Addition of other PythonCAD interfaces will depend on the availability of a Python module for that particular interface and developer interest and action.

The twenty-ninth release of PythonCAD contains various improvements to the internal entity creation and manipulation code. The routines for transferring entities between layers has been reworked, as have the routines for deleting entities. This code rework flushed out a number of bugs and sub-optimal code issues which have been resolved. The code for creating and modifying Dimension entities was both simplified by removing redundant arguments to various methods and some missing undo/redo abilities were added as well. In addition to internal code improvements, the ability to toggle RadialDimension
entities to display diameter values and the ability to invert an AngularDimension entity have been added to the interface. Lastly, a variety of miscellaneous bug fixes and code improvements are present in this release.
Twenty-ninth release of PythonCAD now available