Open Software for Open Hardware

[open3...@gmail.com]

This is an itch I’ve wanted to scratch for a long time….

Currently engineering companies are forced to pay very high costs for
3D mechanical design software

Despite the fact that high quality 3D CAD systems for feature-based
mechanical design have been on the market for many years, there is
still no fully Open Source program that provides even the basic
functionality that an engineer would need to design simple mechanical
parts. This surprises since we have seen many great open source
programs in other areas such as Open Office.

Perhaps people think that mechanical design 3D CAD software is too
complicated to develop. In my opinion, the existing 3D geometry
software called OpenCASCADE can provide the basis for a highly
powerful mechanical design program, which can rapidly developed once
the basic framework is available.

In the attached specifications you will find requirements for a first
prototype of an application which I have named Open3Design. This
prototype is intended to have a simple and easy to upgrade
architecture, and includes only three simple types of features. The
idea is that once this basic architecture exists, it can be rapidly
extended to provide any features that are desired.

My specifications also include a Use Case which I will use to test the
application that you deliver.

For this project, the developer will need the following;
• Experience developing C++ classes and applications
• Experience working with Integrated Development Environments for
simple forms and controls.
• Some experience with 3D graphics systems (or willingness to learn!)
• A Windows 2000 or Windows XP machine
• A copy of the OpenCASCADE software (an open source available from
http://www.opencascade.org/)
• Willingness to read through documentation and examine the
OpenCASCADE example applications in order to figure out how to link
OpenCASCADE with the C++ classes developed for this project.