oli - 2008-07-20

Dear Hugo and all concerned with the archimedes project,

First of all, I just want to say, keep up the good work! It's really great to see this work being done on an open source CAD that will work for architects.   There just aren't that many options out there for us.  

I have read your white paper.  It is good that Archimedes will be a stripped down/configurable/customisable version of autocad, because it is getting really bloated at the moment.   Sat down at AutoCAD 2009 the other day, and it's truly becoming awful for 2D users.

Anyway, I am an architectural student in Australia who is interested in doing an entire semester using open source programs only.   This is going to be fairly easy i believe, except for CAD, which is the linux (and OSS) weak link.   This is why I am so glad you are working on this project (as per usual, in your spare time).

I think you guys are really close to coming up with a package that would function (for me personally) as a base cad package that I could use at UNI, or at work for basic drafting tasks.   However, i won't put feature requests here, as they have already been made in other locations on this site by others (unless you are interested in one more international perspective, or detailed feature requests, in which case I am very happy to reply)

unfortunately I can't offer any cash to the project, but I can offer some time, or testing feedback.   I do have some small programing experience, but I think it is best to leave this in your domain (too many cooks and all that).

Put short, if there is anything i can do to make your life easier while continuing this project, please let me know.

Thanks Again,

Oliver