This manual expects that the user is accustomed to typical office applications, such as word processing and photo manipulation applications, and understands the desktop metaphora / file system. Some notion of engineering drawings is also highly desirable to appreciate what this is all about.
jDraft requires the Java Runtime Environment.
You can download the JRE from:
Sun website http://java.com.
jDraft is written in 100% Pure Java so it can run on a variety of operating systems. It has been tested on the following Operating Systems:
Note that these are not absolute requirements, the software has been tested on a 333 MHz Pentium 3 with 128MB RAM and it runs, but the speed is probably not acceptable. Obviously, the more of everything the merrier it gets. The recommendation is a 2 GHz Intel CPU with at least 1 GB of RAM. On Mac OS X platforms, the Intel Dual Core CPU based Macs offer significant performance boost over the Power PC CPU Based Macs. This is due to the lack of Just In Time compiler support. The Java 6.0 runtime also has a definite advantage in graphics intensive operations, as it includes most.
There is really next to nothing to install.
Just copy the application file to your hard disk and launch it by double-clicking it.
That’s basically all you need to know, if the above works for you, you can skip to the next chapter.
The application typically comes in a compressed archive as listed in table 2.2.
You can download the text archives from
http://sparetimelabs.com/jdraft.
Table 2.1: jDraft Distribution |
You can typically open and uncompress these archieves by simply double-clicking them. Uncompress and copy the application icon to wherever you want. Note that if you change the application file location after the file associations have been registered, you’ll need to unregister and then re-register the associations, see below.
On the first run the application offers to register itself as the handler of documents with the file extenstion / type ’.jdwg’, which is the native format for jDraft drawings. You can decline the file association registration and the software will work just fine, only you cannot open drawings by double-clicking them. You can register/unregister the file associations at any time from the ’File/Associations/ -menu. (Not available/necessary on Mac OS X).
Note: If you launch the application using Java Web Start, i.e. directly from the jDraft homepage, the file associations will not be available.
Whenever the application is launched it checks that a small number of files it needs for storing settings and such, exist. If they do not exist, jDraft will silently create them. It might make sense to back up these files from time to time.
For details, see Appendix A
To launch the application, just double-click the application icon or one of your drawings.
That’s basically all you need to know, if the above works for you, you can skip to the next chapter. The first time you use the application, you’ll need to click the application icon, not one of the drawing document icons, as the file associations are not yet registered. On the first launch, the application offers to do the regisration. Once registered, file associations let you open drawings by double-clicking them. As a detail, launching the application by double-clicking the application icon causes the application to open either the last edited drawing. If it is not available, like on the first run, it’ll creates a new, empty drawing. If you then go on and open more files from the ’File/Open...’ -menu without editing the first drawing, it will be automatically closed.
Note that in Linux the actual application file, ’jDraft-Linux’, which is a shell script and an executable jar file, will not have the jDraft logo icon. Instead, the desktop file ’jDraft.desktop’ has the ’correct’ icon. You can double-click either one to launch the application. The application is also available as an executable jar file:
'Draft.jar
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which can also be launched on most operating system by double-clicking it. But it is also possible to launch the application explicitly from the command line with a command as follows:
java -Xmx1000m -Xss10m -jar 'jDraft.jar'
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Quite a mouthful, but in case the double-click launch fails, you may need to try that. In fact, both the ’jDraft-Win.exe’ and ’jDraft-Linux’ files are ’.jar’ files masquerading as something prettier, so you can use it in above as well. The one advantage of launching from the command line is that you get the ’console’ output in the command line / terminal window. This is useful in case of troubleshooting as all the exceptions the application throws are printed there. Note that in Mac OS this is, cleverly enough, not necessary as the ’Console’ application is always available, even ’after the fact’, just go into the ’/Applications/Utilities/Console’.
jDraft is Shareware use of which is subject to a licence, see appendix B. You can try it until a fixed date after which some of the features are disabled, unless you register tha product. Registration is free. Currently the only feature that becomes disable after the trial period is Saving of drawing documents. Registration is via email.
To register your copy, send a request with your real name and your country of location to
and you will receive the registration key in a return email.
Copy/paste the registration key into the registration dialogue, which you can open from the ’Tools/Registration...’ menu.
The registration key is stored in the ’jDraft.config’ file alongside other application properties, settings and preferences. See Appendix A for details of the location of that file.