Mad idea

[Rocketmagnet]

Hi all,

I mentioned this mad idea before, but now I'm seriously considering
implementing it.

What I think would be *really* useful is for CAD packages to be
integrated into one application, so that major electromechanical
projects can be worked on. Everything would be able to communicate
with eachother, and changes in one part would propagate to other parts
as required.

This would be an amazingly powerful development environment for the
user. They could change the shape of the casing for a product in their
mCAD, which causes the design of the solid model of the PCB to change
to match (this already happens on many commercial CAD packages), then
that would inform the PCB layout that the board outline had changed,
and that maybe moves tracks and components accordingly.

And, I ranted a lot about this in a previous thread.

What this needs is two things:
1. a shared protocol for exchanging information between these
applications.
2. a window manager(s) which these applications will basically plug
into.

So, my mad idea is to slightly put my own project on hold, and begin
developing this protocol and a window manager. But I think the only
way to make this work is to get a few projects in on it to agree a
protocol.

If we make this a good protocol, it would encourage others to join in
and eventually make it truly powerful and make open source CAD the
best kind of CAD.

Hugo