Tue, 09/02/2008 - 13:58
Forums:
I've been using CATIA and was looking for an open source alternative CAD/CAM 3-D modeling software when I came across Opencascade.Will it serve my purpose.Is it the right software for me.
Collaborative development portal
Tue, 09/02/2008 - 15:01
OCC is only open source to some extent, you have to pay for support and you will only get the buggy relesases, the bug fix releases are reserved for paying customers.
And OCC is only a set of libraries for geometry and topology, it is not a complete modeler.
Thu, 09/04/2008 - 14:34
(Haven't replied on this forum for years)
Open CASCADE is a kernel (that is a toolkit, a set of libraries). It's not an end-user application. In this sense it is analogous to CAA (CATIA Application Framework, if I recall the name correctly), the kernel of CATIA itself.
In the past OCC was a kernel for the 3D application family which was positioned as CATIA competitor.
OCC will not offer you a full set of libraries enough to build a full-fledged CAD/CAM/CAE software. It's primarily a CAD part, and Salome (www.salome-platform.org), derived from OCC, will offer you a CAE part.
As for the note of buggy vs bug-fix releases (note of a previous commenter) - it's way overstated. Every public release incorporates all bug fixes made within interim maintenance release. Release Notes of just released 6.3 explicitly mentions the differences between 6.2.1 and 6.2 and 6.3 and 6.2.1. They make maintenance releases available to paying customers as one of the incentives (e.g. to take time advantage over competitors sitting on a public version released less frequently).
Hope this helps.