About

BRL-CAD (pronounced be-are-el-cad) is a powerful, cross-platform, open source solid modeling system that includes interactive three-dimensional (3D) solid geometry editing, high-performance ray tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, network-distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools, path tracing and photon mapping support for realistic image synthesis, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, an embedded scripting interface, and libraries for robust high-performance geometric representation and analysis.
For more than two decades, BRL-CAD has been the primary solid modeling CAD package used by the U.S. government to help model military systems. The package has also been used in a wide range of military, academic, and industrial applications, including the design and analysis of vehicles, mechanical parts, and architecture. Other uses have included radiation dose planning, medical visualization, terrain modeling, constructive solid geometry (CSG), modeling concepts, computer graphics education and system performance benchmark testing

History and Vision

BRL-CAD was originally conceived and written by the late Michael Muuss, the inventor of the popular PING network program. In 1979, the U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) (the agency responsible for creating ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic computer in the 1940s) identified a need for tools that could assist with the computer simulations and analysis of combat vehicle systems and environments. When no existing CAD package was found to be adequate for this specialized purpose, Mike and fellow software developers began developing and assembling a unique suite of utilities capable of interactively displaying, editing, and interrogating geometric models. Those early efforts subsequently became the foundation on which BRL-CAD was built.

Development of BRL-CAD as a unified software package began in 1983, and its first public release came in 1984. Then, in 2004, BRL-CAD was converted from a limited-distribution U.S. government-controlled code to an open source project, with portions licensed under the LGPL and BSD licenses
The ongoing vision for BRL-CAD development is to provide a robust, powerful, flexible, and comprehensive solid modeling system that includes:

-Faithful high-performance geometric representation.
-Efficient and intuitive geometry editing.
-Comprehensive conversion support for all solid geometry formats.
-Effective geometric analysis tools for 3D CAD.

Key Strengths

All CAD packages are not alike. Among the many strengths of the BRL-CAD package are the following:

-BRL-CAD is open source! Don't like something? You can make it better.
-You can leverage decades of invested development. BRL-CAD is the most feature-filled open source CAD system available, with hundreds of years time invested.
-Your work will get used. BRL-CAD is in production use and downloaded thousands of times every month by people all around the world.
-You have the ability to create extensively detailed realistic models.