BoardCAD

BoardCAD is a CAD application aimed towards surf board design. It is an open-source, cross-platform program that provides a rich set of features for conceiving and editing board models.

BoardCAD was brought up in a market that provides little options concerning the surfboard industry, not to mention that the few choices that are offered in this respect come at a cost. In contrast with such software trends, BoardCAD is delivered for free and can be used inside organizations, as well, due to its open-source license.

It is a Java-enabled application, therefore you are asked to install JRE prior to launching it and because it was developed in the form of an applet, you will also need a working Internet connection.

The first thing you’ll notice about BoardCAD is the intuitive and user-friendly appearance. Most of the main window is dedicated to the model itself, while the menus and the toolbars are neatly organized in the upper section.

You can start off a project by creating a new model, however, importing data from an outer source is also possible. It accepts files created with other third-party dedicated programs such asaps3000, shape3D, akushaper and surfcad and can export models to DXF, STL and STEP formats.

Each model can be explored in different views, such as quad, outline, cross section or rendered, while the whole board can be scaled to a desired dimension or resized using a scaling factor. Other highlights include Beizer approximations, a tail designer, as well as the possibility to add new segments to an existing model.

In conclusion, BoardCAD is a steady platform that can be operated by both beginners and experienced users. You can export the board models to popular formats that can be opened by popular CAD modelers.