Building QCAD from Sources using the Visual Studio IDE

Getting the Sources
Clone or download the latest QCAD Community Edition sources from github at:

Alternatively, you can download the sources of the latest official QCAD release from our web site at:

→ QCAD Source Code

Compiling QCAD using Microsoft Visual Studio in a Nutshell

qmake -r -spec win32-msvc2012 -tp vc

Note that qmake is a utility that comes with Qt. The above step generates a so-called solution file (sln) which can later be loaded using Visual Studio. It also generates .vcproj files for the various modules of QCAD.

  • Using the Visual Studio IDE, open and build the sln file that is created in the QCAD directory.

  • The sln file for the Qt script bindings might have to be built separately when using Microsoft Visual Studio as a build tool:

  • Load and build the sln file in
    qcad/src/3rdparty/qt-labs-qtscriptgenerator-x.x.x
    where “x.x.x” is your Qt version, e.g. “5.7.0”.

Running QCAD

The above steps should give you a startable qcad.exe in qcad/src/debug or qcad/src/release.

Notes

Note that the recommended way to compile QCAD sources under Windows is using qmake and nmake (or jom) on a command line as described in detail on our web site at: