Free DWG (was: [Freegis-list] just free)

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 09:44:23AM -0700, Jack Varga wrote:
> Now, a question.  Does anyone know of efforts to develop a DWG
> library that is compatible with GPL, LGPL or a similar license?
> The Open Design Group's OpenDWG library (a misnomer in its own
> right), is seriously problematic in regards to licensing.

You have probably specifically asked for DWG and not DXF.
There are a couple of Free Software projects and libraries 
which try to deal with Autocad files. 
Unfortunately they lack one or the other functionality.
And the existance of the non-free opendwg library
lowers the pressure for people to join and progress with an implemtation.
This has been discussed on the grass development lists
quite often. E.g. see threads around:
	http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2003-May/007854.html
	http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2004-August/015245.html

You find code on www.freegis.org searching for dxf.

There is
	DIME
	dxflib
	dxfscope
	HADES

There is also code in QCAD and PythonCAD.

PythonCAD looks most promissing:
	
 	* Started in August 2003
	* Licensed: GNU GPL
	* It has been written reading the specs from opendwg 
	http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pythoncad/2003-August/000036.html
	* there are about 10 K lines python code for handling dwg files
	in the PythonCAD repository, like dwg15.py
	* The lx-viewer project is assissting in testing
	the dwg reading code http://lx-viewer.sourceforge.net/dwg/dwg.php
	on the 18th Sep they had a Error rate now 62/14756 = 0.420168067%

Bernhard
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