a damned CAD of an ICT dilemma

Well then...

Small Nations Festival needed a quick solution!

The Problem: Some sketches were drawn from a site visit a month ago, these had since been copied into a digital format and now needed to be altered.

So, what we had was a .JPEG file & the original .XAR file
What they needed was a way to alter these documents!

A Computer Aided Design (CAD) program was needed also!
On the grounds that it is VERY expensive to purchase specialised design software like AUTOCAD, we looked at some of the various Open Source options available!! {Free as in Beer}

First we stumbled upon:
CADEMIA
a nice little German package available FREE to Download!!

Then we needed to find out what a .XAR file was and how to open it!!
It turns out it's XARA
...but they are COSTLY too!!
A bit of digging later and we found...
XARA XTREME - a redundant predecessor!
Now having gone to the 'dark-side' ;-) It now offers Linux / Win & Mac releases. (FREE/TRIAL)
This allows us to open the .XAR file!

Again, thinking of Ease of Access - a multi OS software package is DESIRABLE.
theARCproject works across all three standard OS types {although my personal preference is Sn0wL1nux} Ed.

Looking again at a CAD program that meets all the above requirements, we found:
DraftSight

So, we now have a way to open .XAR files and a CAD program that works in .DWG file format
- but how do we get from here to there??
Simple...J.F.G.I. (Just Fuckin' Google IT!)
We found a little prog. that allowed us to CONVERT .PDF files into .DWG format.
Lo and behold XTREME allows us to EXPORT as PDF!!!


Dedicated to Ms. Izzy Stevenson
'Because We Can!'
x

How to Make Hybrid Adobe?

How to Make Hybrid Adobe