Is this project still active?
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/CAD

Or something similar?

That is great news! Any way I can get it and test it out?

I tired a few CAD programs and I find the workflow and interface of AutoDesk Inventor the most intuitive by far. Especially the auto dimensioning- constraint feature is very helpful. See this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbvydg07Wxo

elecman, I think you may have been fooled by a spammer. From this bug report/feature request, it looks like it hasn't been active for some time. https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/171128

Damn

If you thought Inventor was good, then you might be better served with a dedicated CAD program, rather than Inkscape with a few CAD add-ons.
There is nothing wrong with a lightweight CAD. It will suit some peoples need perfectly. But Inkscape's cultural heart is in illustrative drawing.
If you were looking for an open source CAD program I'm sure there are some dedicated ones that you might prefer. I'm a heavy CAD user, and the open source programs are way too weak for the needs of my industry. But for casual work there are some interesting things to choose from.

For my use case, I am a bit stuck in the middle. This is what I am trying to re-create:


It is an aircraft display (A320).

A CAD program is perfect for creating the shapes and their relative position to each other. However, most CAD programs don't support SVG output, together with fills, strokes, gradient's, text boxes, etc. They are just not designed for that. A vector graphics editor is perfect for creating the eye candy but it is tedious to make something accurate. Now, I don't mean to say I can't create that instrument using Inkscape, as it is perfectly possible. It is just way more work without a few simple CAD features like constraints and linked dimensions. Look at the video I posted. How long would it take you with Inkscape to make that simple shape?

It is sad to see that so few people make this connection but I guess this is a bit of a corner case.

Drawing the image with inkscape, maybe a few hours time, or a day the max.
Using a cad software, would took forever -adjusting line widths, layer labeling, trying to produce fills that won't get triangulated at saving to pdf and such.

Yes, doing this in CAD alone would take a long time too. But if Inkscape would support CAD features, that graphic would probably only take an hour or so.

I'd like to chime in on this post. I use Inventor everyday and Inkscape a few times a week. I can't for the life of me think why someone would want to draw that image in CAD, on the other hand, I've used plenty of software for odd things. No judging here. The image that you posted can easily be created in Inkscape without any CAD tools whatsoever. I see nothing but shapes and maybe a few boolean operations. Perhaps trimming, line extending and mirroring is what you're after. In a round about way, those things can be done in Inkscape.

Speaking of CAD and SVG, maybe what you would be interested in is the free DraftSight application from Dassault. It's an AutoCAD clone. Draw your shapes and export to SVG if that's what you're more comfortable doing. Also, the free Autodesk Fusion 360 cloud app imports SVG files. I don't believe it exports SVG but I could be wrong about that.

I'm also a daily cad and inkscape user. For something like the above, I'd use inkscape's guides heavily.

It becomes almost trivial to precisely position off centerlines after a few rounds of dragging another guide to center and double-clicking to enter relative values.

Using flipped clones for symmetric elements could speed things up when tweaking.

elecman wrote:It is sad to see that so few people make this connection but I guess this is a bit of a corner case.

It's not a case of being so few. This a request we see a lot of, and by some of your replies to older threads, I see you've been searching them out! So there is a lot of interest in such a feature, or group of features. Its more a matter (probably) of getting a developer interested in working on it (or finding someone capable who would want to join the dev team).

Maybe this would be a good example of something that would benefit from Inkscape's new funded development guidelines? This offers some exciting possibilities, but would require one or more people who are commited to raising the funds, and keeping the project on track. It wouldn't be as simple as just opening an account in one of those fund-raising websites, and then sitting back and waiting. Follow that link for details.

Hello,
The vectorized image, is going to be used for fabrication?... Use a CAD program
It would be for an art design or artcraft, a game maybe?...You can use Inkscape.

For your image,
- Import it an put on a layer. Lock it the layer
- Put another layer and hand trace: bezier tool FTW.
- After that, you can refine it: the new measure tool for comprobations, aligning and snaping, guide lines too.



However, I would be interested in to know what kind of CAD drawings can't be done using Inkscape, or are impossible to do.

hulf2012 wrote:However, I would be interested in to know what kind of CAD drawings can't be done using Inkscape, or are impossible to do.

Given enough time and effort, anything could be, right? (Some folks can still use t-square, triangles, sliderule, etc.)

But the sketching tools in cad are optimized for efficiently creating and communicating manufacturing information (features, dimensions), whereas the toolset in Inkscape is directed at generating imagery. i.e. You could make cad drawings in Inkscape or images in cad, but "horses for courses".

heathenx wrote:The image that you posted can easily be created in Inkscape without any CAD tools whatsoever.

Yes, true. But I meant that it would be just faster if Inkscape would support a few CAD features. The Inkscape CAD features are not meant to replace either a CAD program, or make something impossible possible. It is just meant to speed up the workflow to create certain type of graphics.

tylerdurden wrote:For something like the above, I'd use inkscape's guides heavily.

I am getting more accustomed to guides now and they sure are powerful!

brynn wrote:This a request we see a lot of (...) So there is a lot of interest in such a feature, or group of features. Maybe this would be a good example of something that would benefit from Inkscape's new funded development

Thanks for pointing that out.

hulf2012 wrote:Hello,
The vectorized image, is going to be used for fabrication?... Use a CAD program
It would be for an art design or artcraft, a game maybe?...You can use Inkscape.

However, I would be interested in to know what kind of CAD drawings can't be done using Inkscape, or are impossible to do.

That image will be used in a flight simulator for a pilot training application, made in Unity, and rendered using the NoesisGUI Unity plugin.
Using any type of dedicated CAD program is nearly out of the question because of the shady support of fills, strokes, etc. So I will have to do it with InkScape. But again, it is not that some shapes in this image are impossible to make with InkScape. The CAD proposal is just to speed up certain operations.