On Wednesday 25 June 2014 13:29:05 you wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I occasionally need to do some drafting.  About
> 25 years ago I knew AutoCad somewhat.  Currently,
> I need to do some minor landscape architecture.
> 
> On research, I am finding four Open Source alternatives:
>      FreeCAD
>      QCad Community Edition
>      Archimedes
>      BRL-CAD
> 
> Each seems to have it points.
> 
> Have you guys used any of these and do you have an
> opinion on them?  (It may come down to who has RPMs.)

	FreeCAD
Not familiar with this.

	LibreCAD (not QCad)
LibreCAD should replace QCad for all intents and purposes. It was a fork of 
QCad that has grown into something much more interesting. I used to package 
it, but haven't had time to work on LibreCAD or packaging for a long time (so 
my existing packages which would work on SL6 are way out of date). Anyway, 
installing it from source (or packaging it) was a snap on Fedora 14 and still 
should be rather easy.

	Archimides
Not familiar with this.

	BRL-CAD
Great, but probably not for what you're interested in. Its real focus is 3D 
simulation, not just drawings. With things like LibreCAD the control language 
(which is scheme-based in LibreCAD, very similar to AutoDesk's 2D) and the GUI 
tools are given equal weight. In BRL-CAD there is a gui, but its pretty obtuse 
compared to the absolute and fine control granted by writing in the control 
language. BRL-CAD is not a trivial system to get into; very steep learning 
curve with a very high payoff. More of a career descision than something you'd 
get rolling with over a weekend. This is the killer app for people interested 
in "3D simulations for engineering, not art".

	OpenSCAD
Another great 3D tool, but whereas BRL-CAD excels at simulation and is more 
complex for it, OpenSCAD is focused on making shapes and drawings and is 
accordingly simpler. It relies entirely on the control language, but is *much* 
easier to get started with than BRL-CAD. This one feel complicated at first, 
but it turns out to be something you can get working in a weekend. Most folks 
I know in the OpenSCAD community use it to create neat things to pass to 3D 
printers or creating very early prototype models. Its language has awkward 
areas (going back to a scheme-based language would do wonders here...) but its 
easy to get started on and there are loads of online examples, quick-start 
tutorials and shape libraries. If you need 3D this is where I would start (or 
Blender, see below).

	Blender
If you're going the 3D route anyway and you want pretty colors and things, and 
you don't like the idea of being forced to learn a control language then this 
is probably your best bet. Camera perspective in a GUI drawing tool is always 
something annoying to mess with, but Blender has a surprising number of tricks 
available to make this easier -- but you won't discover them until you've made 
a few drawings and gotten used to the environment. This is sort of the killer 
app for people interested in "3D art, not simulations for engineering". I'm 
pretty sure this is in EPEL.

Of the projects's I'm personally familiar with, LibreCAD probably suits your 
needs best. 3D is a whole new world of complexity that just doesn't tend to 
benefit people as much as the think, especially when the actual use-case is 
creating digital blueprints (as opposed to creating an ooh-aah game or movie 
scene -- which lacks any way to meter or measure for use by a worker on-site 
who need to know where to plant his shovel).

There are other projects, these are just the ones you either mentioned or I am 
familiar with personally. Hope you find something useful!