Cad freeware application that runs on Centos?

[nadsab]

Hi there,

I am in need of a freeware cad application that runs on Centos 5.4, does anyone have any suggestions? Something that has a quick learning curve would be nice...

All I am doing is drawing up blue prints for some simple machined parts such as rods with holes bored into them, some small rectangular blocks of aluminum bored, drilled and tapped - that's about it nothing that complicated to draw. I need to do about a dozen drawings over a weekend for a small tool I am designing.

The only requirement is that it exports drawings to either Step, igef or Parasolids format and is fairly easy to dimension parts with. Also what would be better of the three formats, what is the difference in them? I'm not familiar with cad file formats.

Oh and by the way if I create a cad drawing on a linux machine in any of the above three formats, would there be a problem viewing these files on a windows box?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[pschaff]

You should not be running anything on the obsolete/unsupported version 5.4 - 5.7 is the current CentOS-5 release. See the [url=http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.7]CentOS 5.7 Release Notes[/url] for details. By not updating you are implicitly accepting that you will live with numerous bugs and security issues (and associated known exploits) that have subsequently been fixed.

I don't see any mechanical CAD programs in the well-know [url=http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories]Repositories[/url], although there are several circuit design packages. Perhaps the results of the following googles, or variants, may help:

[url=https://www.google.com/search?q=mechanical+%22computer+aided+design%22+rhel5+OR+centos5+OR+%22centos-5%22+OR+%22red+hat+enterprise+linux+5%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&safe=active]mechanical "computer aided design" rhel5 OR centos5 OR "centos-5" OR "red hat enterprise linux 5"[/url]
[url=https://www.google.com/search?q=mechanical+CAD+rhel5+OR+centos5+OR+%22centos-5%22+OR+%22red+hat+enterprise+linux+5%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&safe=active]mechanical CAD rhel5 OR centos5 OR "centos-5" OR "red hat enterprise linux 5"[/url]
[url=https://www.google.com/search?q=~free+mechanical+CAD+rhel5+OR+centos5+OR+%22centos-5%22+OR+%22red+hat+enterprise+linux+5%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&safe=active]~free mechanical CAD rhel5 OR centos5 OR "centos-5" OR "red hat enterprise linux 5"[/url]

There are several commercial alternatives, The closest thing I saw to free in a brief scan of results was for free trials.