In this month's edition of COMMUNIQUÉ, ENGINEERING.com takes a look at Open-Source and some of the ideas that are driving a change in the perception towards it. |
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Engineering Open-Source Applications : |
| ENGINEERING.com quickly examines and comments on 3 Open-Source CAD software projects that have been designed with the user in mind. |
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QCad
QCad is an open-source 2D application for CAD users. You will need to do the build of this code yourself as it is not compiled. However, once you do, you will have access to over 40 construction and 20 modification tools in a simple to use 2D environment. No need to be a professional CAD Designer to use this program.
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Open CASCADE
Open CASCADE is an open-source Java-based CAD/CAM/CAE software development platform boasting 3D surface and solid modeling, visualization, data exchange and rapid application development. At first glance this program appears to be more of an analysis tool, but after some use also demonstrates its ability to draw and shade coordinate-based shapes and some other fancy features too. |
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BRL-CAD
Straight from the U.S. Army Research Lab, BRL-CAD is a collection of libraries, tools, and utilities that work together to create, raytrace, and interrogate geometry and manipulate files and data. This program has some pretty robust features. However, be wary of this resource heavy application. |
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ENGINEERING.COM launches all-new CAD Knowledge Base : |
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Open Source in Education : |
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How the Open Source Movement Has Changed Education
How would you like to study at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for free? It has been nearly six years since MIT first announced their MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) program ... |
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Sun Chair Touts Open-Source Education
Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy is spending a lot of time as pitchman for a project called Curriki — short for curriculum and wiki, which is a website allowing users to add and modify content and claim a piece of authorship
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Open-Source in Space : |
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Open-Source Software and Its Role in Space Exploration
What did the rocket scientist say to the Free/Open Source Software developer? Let's do launch! It's only natural that they'd want to work together
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Young Scientists Design Open-Source Program at NASA
NASA scientists plan to announce a new open-source project this month called CosmosCode -- it's aimed at recruiting volunteers to write code for live space missions ... |
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Other Open-Source Applications and Projects: |
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10 Open Source Apps You Can't Live Without
Even for the most seasoned computer user, taking the leap to open source can prove to be a bit daunting. But once you have a solid base of core applications, I believe most people will find the switch is not nearly as painful as they imagined.
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Open Source Projects: 15 To Watch
Within the past few years, the software movement known as “open source” has gained serious traction over its proprietary cousins. As it has taken hold of the mainstream, many of these applications – like Firefox and Thunderbird – are used everyday, without a second thought as to their origins. |
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80 Open Education Resource (OER) Tools for Publishing and Development Initiatives
Even for the most seasoned computer user, taking the leap to open source can prove to be a bit daunting. But once you have a solid base of core applications, I believe most people will find the switch is not nearly as painful as they imagined. |
