Hi. I was just approved by SourceForge to create a CAD application written in C# called sharpCAD. I have been working as a C++ programmer and CAD developer for about 5 years. I have taken full advantage of all the great products created by the open source community and felt that I should try and give something back. I have lately started to learn C# and decided that I needed a project to help me improve my skills. Never having worked on a major product from the absolute ground up can anyone please offer their advise. I have decided that the first thing I need to do is establish a mutiple document interface. Is this a step in the right direction? Thank you.

Design first! (Not the GUI but datastructures and workflow)

The best way, in order to finish the project in the end, is to think through your app first. A GUI is 'easily' (re)build, data structures and workflow are not.

Make a list with features to be build, order them by priority and start building from the top.

GUI will follow, don't spend to much time on it at first.

Cheers

Hi!

A CAD software is a huge project. Even a simple CAD project.

I think that you should first write one or two simple test applications which test one or two of your planned features. What I usually do with my projects is that I first make a test app of what is new to me or I think that is hard.

So I suggest you write an application that can only draw a shape consisting of a bunch of lines and arcs and perhaps rotate or scale or something. When you know how to do that, then start the actual project and incorporate the old features (and perhaps some of the code) to that.

BTW. What kind of CAD application are you writing and to whom? As in who is your "target audience"?

-Richardo

Thanks you guys. Yeah, I guess that the first thing I need to is establish a road map. I guess also my initial application will be 2d, and so it will initially be focused towards draftsmen.