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U.S. Army Research Lab Opens BRL-CAD Source

Posted by timothy on Sat Jan 08, 2005 01:32 PM
from the not-like-the-public-paid-for-it-or-anything dept.
Software United States GNU is Not Unix
brlcad writes "After 20 years of active development under a proprietary government license agreement, the BRL-CAD solid modeling suite has just been released as Open Source software. BRL-CAD is one of the many legacies of the late Michael Muuss, author of ping. The package began on the PDP-11 and VAX 11/780--before the emergence of ANSI/ISO C language standards--and boasts one of the first parallel Ray tracers in existence. Today BRL-CAD has over 750,000 lines of source code. It incorporates both 3D modeling and rendering capabilities, and supports an API for user-developed geometric analysis applications. It continues to be developed and maintained by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and its partners. Various portions of the package are distributed under the GPL, LGPL, GFDL, and BSD licenses."
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  • In a world dominated by... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BJZQ8 (644168) on Saturday January 08 2005, @01:42PM (#11298046) Homepage Journal
    In a world dominated by things like UniGraphics, AutoCAD, and Pro/Engineer, it will be nice to have a professional-level CAD package available under a less-restrictive license...But I don't see it challenging the established niches of those previous packages for awhile. It's the "if it's cheap, it must not be good" mentality that really does apply to CAD software...
    • You left out Solidworks.
      I am looking forward to seeing what this can do.
      If it can not export STL or IGES it is not going to catch on
    • To paraphrase:
      "In a world dominated by things like Microsoft and Apple, I don't see Linux challenging the established niches of those previous packages for a while."

    • Re:In a world dominated by... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by UniverseIsADoughnut (170909) on Saturday January 08 2005, @01:55PM (#11298135)
      I see it can't export to pro/e so thats not very good.

      Yeah, cheap CAD Doesn't tend to mean much, also you are only as good as your file support.

      AutoCAD doesn't belong here, it's not a solid modeler, yeah they are trying to extend it, but thats just a level of evil on top of the already evil that is auto cad.

      Solidworks is one you left out, and they did change things, they came out with a CAD program for 5 grand that was up there with Pro E, but they tossed a lot of features that most never need, and ditched multi-platform which tends to be overrated for something like this. And do to this and their sudden eating of PTCs market PTC cut the price on pro/e 2001 and wildfire to 5 grand. So things are changing some. 33 Grand for one seat of a CAD program has finally become a thing of the past.

      • Re:In a world dominated by... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I see it can't export to pro/e so thats not very good.

        From the overview:

        - An assortment of geometric converters to convert to and/or from other geometry formats, including Euclid, ACAD, AutoCAD DXF, TANKILL, Wavefront OBJ, Pro/ENGINEER, JACK (the human factors model for doing workload/usability studies), Viewpoint Data Lab, NASTRAN, Digital Equipment's Object File Format (OFF), Virtual Reality Mark-up Language (VRML), Stereo Lithography (STL), Cyberware Digitizer data, and FASTGEN4.

        Have an agenda
      • 33 Grand for one seat of a CAD program has finally become a thing of the past.

        Looked at DS CATIA V5 pricing lately? :)
      • This isn't just CAD! It's used for ballistic testing. i.e. A tank gets hit with a shell, how does the energy transfer throughout the tank and how can we design it better to not blow up.
        Regards,
        Steve
        • It's just that BRL-CAD's geared for high-speed events as well as low-speed events in it's FEA work.

          SolidWorks and ProE might be able to deal with it barely since they do FEA and other stuff like BRL-CAD does...
    • "It's the "if it's cheap, it must not be good" mentality that really does apply to CAD software..."

      No problem. I'd be happy to sell this software for $3000 per copy.
    • The DoD's been using this little package for some time as their modeling and engineering tool for the Ballistics Resarch Lab that is attached to the Aberdeen Proving Ground. This is the bunch tasked with improving our armored vehicles and improving our ammo to trash our opponents' vehcicles much more easily. BRL-CAD is the tool that they use to accomplish the modeling and simulation portions of this task.

      It's on a par with SolidWorks and ProE and it's battle proven as it were. Like most Government p

  • OSX Screenshots (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theoneknuckles (608389) on Saturday January 08 2005, @01:44PM (#11298056)
    Is it me or are the screenshots showing this puppy running on Mac OSX?
    • Yep.

      Apple's been inheriting SGI and Sun workstation customers at a pretty good clip over the last couple of years ;-)

      -jcr

      • Apple's been inheriting SGI and Sun workstation customers at a pretty good clip over the last couple of years ;-)

        Nowhere near as much as Linux has. OS X doesn't make a good substitute for a UNIX workstation (I tried to make it work): they have non-standard administrative interfaces and their X11 server isn't very good and poorly integrated with the desktop.
    • It's running inside X11 on OS X.

      But yes, it's running on OS X.

      p

    • Re:OSX Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)

      by morrison (40043) * on Saturday January 08 2005, @04:36PM (#11299394) Homepage
      Indeed it is running on Mac OS X. It's ran on OS X since the early Public Beta days -- the port took me much less time than it's taking me to write this comment.

      BRL-CAD has a long history of running on many systems that range from your average desktop running Linux to Cray supercomputers fully taking advantage of the CPU resources on any of them. Support is presently actively maintained for Mac OS X, Linux, IRIX, and Solaris (*BSD usually just works). Support for Windows is there too, though it's only recently been a focus of development.

      Some legacy platforms include the DEC VAX-11 running 4.3 BSD, DECStations running ULTRIX, SGI 4Ds running various versions of IRIX, Sun-3 and Sun-4 Sparcs running SunOS, the Cray 1, X-MP and Y-MP running UNICOS, the Cray 2, DEC Alpha AXP running OSF/1, the Apple MAC II running A/UX, iPSC/860 Hypercube running NX/2, Alliant FX/8, Alliant FX/2800, Gould SEL, PowerNode, the Gould NP1, NeXT, HPPA 9000/700 running HPUX, the Ardent/Stardent, the Encore Multi-Max, and much more...

      It's also been compiled on many versions of Linux, BSD, AIX, IRIX, Solaris over the years. Keep in mind just how old the project has been actively maintained. Two decades of supporting the latest and greatest is a lot of varied hardware and operating systems.

  • The army putting a foot on our side = good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KiloByte (825081) on Saturday January 08 2005, @01:45PM (#11298063)
    It's not really about the package in question. The important thing here is, if the US Army learns that GPLing their code can be beneficial for them, we can get a very powerful ally.

    Besides, that piece of software was developed for your (and even a bit of my) money anyway...

    • Re:The army putting a foot on our side = good (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The important thing here is, if the US Army learns that GPLing their code can be beneficial for them, we can get a very powerful ally.

      Especially when it comes to "enforcing" the GPL.

    • Re:The army putting a foot on our side = good (Score:5, Funny)

      by aixou (756713) on Saturday January 08 2005, @01:54PM (#11298132)
      I think it'd be better if the Air Force was on our side. Just call up someone high on the inside " We're gonna need an unmanned airstrike at 122.125 west 47.681 north. Yeah, it's Fallujah."
    • Vader: If he could be turned, he would become a powerful ally.
    • we can get a very powerful ally

      Because, otherwise the US Army is not a very powerful ally? People can split all the hairs they want about what the army is called to do, but they do it at the behest of elected officials. As an institution, though, you'll never have a better "ally" than the US military.

      What the comment really does is illustrate the cultural distance between the military and the techno/edu/info people of the world. There is no them-us dynamic here folks: them IS us, and a lot of those mi
    • "The important thing here is, if the US Army learns that GPLing their code can be beneficial for them, we can get a very powerful ally."

      You're assuming that the community would accept such an ally. Consider the outcry you hear every time when this group of "father rapers" turns out to be using a piece of FOSS software. "We should modify the license to specifically ban the military from using our app!"

      • Consider the outcry you hear every time when this group of "father rapers" turns out to be using a piece of FOSS software. "We should modify the license to specifically ban the military from using our app!"

        Yeah, that's a really good point. I'm really sick of all the talk about "father rapers" in the open source community. It happens so often, it's pretty much all you read about. "Father rapers this," "father rapers that". It's almost as if there is nothing else people want to talk about.

  • Licensing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BossMC (696762)
    Behold the versatility of the GPL, LGPL, GFDL, and BSD quadra-license! With the viral nature of the GPL, and the total anarchy of the BSDL, it will be unstoppable!

    But really, how come licensing comes to this? Is it from the authors placing more value on different portions of the code, or is it a condition posed by contributors, or what? I am not even barely a lawyer, and all of my personal code is of such little value that charging money or placing much in the way of conditions would be criminal.

    I kind of

    • Re:Licensing (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Heisenbug (122836)
      I kind of see multi-licensing as having a different insurance policy for each fender on your car.

      With 20 years of active development, it's probably more like having different insurance policies for each vehicle in your car show.
    • Different portions of the package are intended for use in different ways. It doesn't make much sense to license a work based on content, rather than on functionality, under the (L)GPL; this is the point of the GFDL. The software freedoms don't really make sense for the documentation.

      The GPL and LGPL differ essentially on whether the thing as a whole is intended to be used by itself or plugged into arbitrary other programs. The BSD license is preferrable for things where the code encourages free standards,
      • I actually once heard about a bunch of cars with frozen pipes. Granted, it was japanese cars bound for California, and they were frozen by mistake (they were transported as bulk cargo on a ship with refrigiated cargoholds) during a cooling plant test. But the end result was a lot of cars with pipes (and in a few cases engines) split open by the water freezing and expanding.

  • Played with it in 1988.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by freelunch (258011) on Saturday January 08 2005, @01:51PM (#11298110)
    Back in the day, I requested a copy around '88. The only format available then was 9 track tape. I think I had to send a real letter requesting it and explaining my intent (curiosity, mostly).

    After waiting many weeks, I sent Michael Muuss an email flaming a little (very young and cocky) and asking "Hey, where's my tape!?". I ran across a print out of that email and his reply when I was moving a few years back. He explained that he had to make the tapes himself, etc.

    With much pain, I translated the tape to a QIC cartridge and built it on our Sun gear (I was working at an imaging company). It was a large build.

    Their 3D editor was pretty neat for the day and I did a little with the ray tracer. The package had, no kidding, a lot of heavy duty ballastic tools that I didn't care about.. That was about it.

    But the print out of Muuss' email is a keeper.
    • I did the same about ten years ago. I waited a few months and then a huge box arrived with several telephone book sized manuals.

      I am sitting here with the box now, and I see a letter signed by Mike Muuss (xeroxed) revealing the secret password to decrypt the tar files with crypt. I guess now since the contents of these files are now available, there is no harm in me revealing that the password was "alphabeta".

  • F/OSS officially supported by US gov't. (Score:5, Informative)

    by pongo000 (97357) on Saturday January 08 2005, @01:54PM (#11298128)
    Some of you may not realize this, but the Federal government supports F/OSS [gocc.gov]. Several state governments (I know Texas does for certain) have passed mandates and recommendations that encourage and/or require state agencies to consider F/OSS solutions over proprietary solutions.

    Unfortunately, much of this information is squelched by the press, since the press has shown to be woefully ignorant of F/OSS concepts. I would imagine many state and Federal agencies routinely violate rules requiring them to review F/OSS software due to ignorance. I've identified several instances of such a failure in the community college district where I work: Purchases and bids for proprietary software are routinely approved, and when I ask for a list of F/OSS alternatives that were considered, I'm greeted with a blank stare.

    The bottom line is that F/OSS has made inroads, but without oversight from the F/OSS community, many of these initiatives are simply ignored and routinely violated.

    • Re:F/OSS officially supported by US gov't. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You couldn't be more wrong. Several states and the federal government have long held that competitive bidding on contracts, including those to supply software, are the ideal in order to save tax payers money. If you've ever been involved with procurement, you'd know that most places have policies AGAINST single-source suppliers. ALL software developed using federal funds is public domain with the exception of those classified for national security reasons. This is not new and is not a result of the FOSS
    • Not many contractors really want to sign up for those government contracts. Sure they have big numbers associated with them, but there is usually so much paperwork associated with them that no one wants to deal with it. The companies that are willing to sign up for those contracts are few and far between. Since the playing field is so limited, it doesn't take many Microsoft Whores to tilt the buying decisions in that direction for a lot of government contract work. The Government just assumes that for its m
    • It's not just FOSS.

      When I was in the 1973rd Com Group (AF), there was a mandate/reg that said any project which required a greater than 30% change in source code was to be redone in Ada.

      The civilians in our shop where clueless with Ada and only passable with COBOL. When one of the ladies was sent back from Ada training due to her complete lack of programing skill, Ada was blacklisted by the department heads.

      From then on all projects that required more than 30% change were divided into smaller project

    • My woman's been programming for our county for the last year, replacing some recording software. What's interesting is how much trouble it is to convince people that it's okay to replace what they have -- she had to call the state offices to confirm that they did not, in fact, have laws requiring the use of the software made by a particular vendor (out of 3) ... the clerks all thought they had to. It didn't matter what other software was out there, as far as they were concerned, the state required them to b
  • Put this in perspective for me... how does it compare to SolidWorks? I found that super easy to use, but perhaps not as powerful as some other packages.
  • Is there a preferred/traditional way to also make 2D drawings/paperspace views of the models with this system? Also, capabilities for multiuser environment? I come from AutoCAD/ProE/AutoTrol background
  • Where's the repository of model files? I want to redesign the Navy's floating airport for civilian use in NYC.

  • CVS repository goes back 17 years!! (Score:3, Informative)

    by ispel (266661) on Saturday January 08 2005, @02:10PM (#11298220)
    Check out the repository for this project hosted on SF [sourceforge.net]. Here's a link to the readme file history [sourceforge.net] (dates back to 17 years, 11 months ago!!!).

    It is possible they have been using CVS all these years; CVS was publically released in 1896 [wikipedia.org], though I believe they may have alternatively used RCS [wikipedia.org] and migrated to CVS somewhere down the line.

  • I'm not enough of a KDE programmer to know what it would take to port this. I would really like to see something like this in a standard linux distribution along side other great programs like mozilla, open office, GIMP. ETC. (or Koffice, Konqueror, etc.)

  • Open Source or Free? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Given that the licenses are the GPL, LGPL, GFDL, and BSD, wouldn't it be more appropriate for the summary to say that BRL-CAD had been released as Free, rather than Open Source Software? This is Slashdot, where people are expected to know the difference.
  • I have BRLCAD installed here on a Sun workstation at home and I can tell you that it takes some getting used to as it's not very user friendly.

    Like most powerful tools it's difficult to learn to use with effectiveness. That and the interface is more than a little clunky

    I honestly prefer things like SolidWorks which while not as powerful is a hell of a lot easier to use.

    • Re:Ummm (Score:5, Informative)

      by nurb432 (527695) on Saturday January 08 2005, @02:10PM (#11298222) Homepage Journal
      I don't think it was truly 'open', but you did get sources.

      You had to register, and there were some restrictions from what i remember. But i admit its been 8+ years since i read it, so i could be totally wrong on that..

      I registered, ( and used it ) back when you had to contact the FED's first.. They even gave out a complete set of printed manuals. Was pleasantly surprised when the box showed. I had not expected to get anything.. Scary when you get a call about an unexpected package from the DOD waiting for you at the office :)

      One of the good examples of our tax dollars at work.
    • By Tim's logic we should be able to walk into the closest fed building and grabs some stationary. Cause, we paid for it.
      • By Tim's logic we should be able to walk into the closest fed building and grabs some stationary. Cause, we paid for it.
        I think you're confusing information with physical objects.
        • The point is that we didn't pay for the government to create acad software package for us. We paid them to protect and serve us. In fufilling that mission, they found it neccisary to create a cad package. As long as they are using it to serve us, our money is being well spent. The government has no obligation to give it back to us. It it really is a good they could have marketed it and sold it. The proceeds could be used to pay for other items they need and reduce the need for taxpayer contributions. Everyo
    • Think of a serious CAD package with things like Finite Element Analysis plugins. The rendering tool is just one of numerous plugins for this package.

      Think somewhere in the class of Solidworks and ProE- the DoD uses this tool to run simulations of survivability on models of our armor and other people's.

    • Re:Corresponding Open Source 2D CAD? (Score:4, Informative)

      by The_Dougster (308194) on Saturday January 08 2005, @07:56PM (#11300685)
      As a mechanical engineer who has been using Linux regularly for over five years, I can only really recommend:

      QCad [ribbonsoft.com]

      QCad is probably the closest thing to AutoCAD LT that you will find for Linux. It has a nice easy-to-use interface, seems mathematically correct, and is still under active development. Most Linux distros offer it as a binary package; i.e. apt-get install qcad or emerge qcad.

      Other currently usable engineering type tools which you may or may not be aware of are:

      • Blender3D [blender3d.com] - You probably heard of this
      • FElt [sourceforge.net] - Open Source Finite Elements Program

      What needs to happen is these tools should all be made to interact now. Draft your model in BRL-CAD (or Blender), run FEA on it using FElt, and then import views into QCad to dimension and plot out hardcopies. Some nice tight integration between these packages would be great.

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