[freearchitecture] An open CAD file format

[Bruno Postle]

On Mon 17-Feb-2003 at 12:04:34PM -0500, Steve Hall wrote:

> I use genealogy software that maintains data in a file store. The
> pointer file's MIME type associates with the app. The average user
> could handle this if the structure was a single compressed file
> (like OO). There has to be *some* way to hand the data off without
> connection to CVS/db, I guess that's why I seized on the zip file
> package notion. Perhaps a file out of the CVS system could be
> orphaned somehow?

Basically a packaged archive with a zip extension is orphaned from
CVS just in the same way as a tar.gz snapshot is orphaned from an
open-source software CVS tree.

That doesn't mean that you can't work on the contents, "diff" will
happily record all your changes and produce a patch file that can be
used to return the modifications to CVS.

> > Of course, all this can be made non-scary with many free
> > pointy-clicky GUI tools.
> 
> The CAD/CVS part, yes. But it should look reasonable from the file
> manager, too.

In Windows Explorer you can do registry or AUTORUN.INF hacks to make
directories appear as something else.  You can do similar things
with open-source file-managers like Nautilus or Konqueror.

> Hmm... we use Xrefs for layering plan info, not for blocks. The
> Architecture dept. maintains base plans (based on Structural plans)
> and Electrical, Mechanical and Plumbing engineers xreference them.
> When we update, they get the changes automatically.

:-)  It's funny how the restrictions of the software dictate the
working methods.

The file-format (DWG) and storage format (network-drive) are
incredibly limited - To the absurd extent that only one person can
work on a drawing at any one time.

The result is that different users have to maintain entirely
separate drawings so that they don't trash each others work.  They
then abuse a feature designed for modularisation and component reuse
to simulate a shared drawing.

(I understand there are political/business reasons why architects
wouldn't want engineers to have write access to their drawings - But
with a fine-grained system you would only need to accept
modifications that met the right criteria, such as particular
layers)

-- 
Bruno