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Old 09-24-2021, 11:35 AM
Laurence Finston Laurence Finston is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2021
Location: Germany
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I've never met Richard Stallman but I've had occasional friendly contact with him about my (2) GNU packages.

I would only recommend GNU 3DLDF to people who are either already using TeX and/or MetaPost or METAFONT or are interested in doing so. Also, only for people who want to program drawings rather than using a mouse and a graphical user interface.

When I learned to use AutoCAD a long time ago, I quickly started to use AutoLISP for this purpose. At the time, AutoCAD was very expensive. I don't know what it costs now. GNU 3DLDF was and is meant to be a program for making technical drawings which is free, i.e., free as in speech AND free as in beer.

Otherwise, there are a lot of other 3D graphics programs out there and possibly a better choice, depending on what one wants to do.

Obviously, as one person alone I can't compete with the makers of AutoCAD. For example, I have no intention of ever programming anything for calculating stress on various materials or things like that.

However, the basic things one needs to make technical drawings can be programmed with a reasonable amount of effort.

I did my first polyhedron models, which I actually built, using AutoCAD. Unfortunately, they're packed away in a box far at the back of my basement. Otherwise I'd post photos of them. I must have the AutoCAD files too, somewhere.
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