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chronos00
Asked: 2018-03-22 17:58:35 +0800 CST

ODA Drawings Explorer (formerly Teigha Viewer) for DWG files. How to install and make it work properly?

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ODA Drawings Explorer (formerly Teigha Viewer) is a free (not libre) viewer for proprietary DWG files, developed by Open Design Alliance.

The developing company provides RPM and DEB packages for easy installation at their site.

I download the 64 bit DEB package, and install it using:

sudo dpkg -i TeighaViewer_QT5_lnxX64_4.7dll.deb

After that, the software is easily installed and I can run the software from Dash (windows key + typing Teigha) or from bash with the command

TeighaViewer

The software loads quickly and automatically prompts to open a file. This is where the trouble beings... and ends: the moment I select any DWG, TeighaViewer consistently crashes every time.

  • Regardless if I select big or small DWGs
  • Regardless of the location of the files I select or permissions.
  • Regardless if the DWG file was generated with a new or old version of AutoCAD
  • Regardless if I install the Windows version of Teigha with wine and run it

In all of these cases, Teigha systematically crashes.

I have even tried to open the DWG file directly from command line by issuing:

TeighaViewer myTestFile.dwg

But it still crashes. Note there are no spaces in the name of test DWG file being opened.

When running Teigha from command line, there is a hint of the problem though:

~$ TeighaViewer myTestFile.dwg 
QString::arg: Argument missing: Property Dialog, Teigha Viewer
QString::arg: Argument missing: Property Dialog, Teigha Viewer
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'OdError'
Aborted (core dumped)

I have googled everywhere for these errors, and came empty handed.

Could the be related to missing QT libraries?

My setup:

$ lsb_release -a
Description:    Ubuntu 17.10

$ gnome-shell --version
GNOME Shell 3.26.2

$ uname -a
Linux 4.13.0-36-generic #40-Ubuntu SMP Fri Feb 16 20:07:48 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep model
model       : 142
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8550U CPU @ 1.80GHz

If anyone was able to make TeighaViewer run on Ubuntu, I would like to know their setup (Ubuntu version, 32 or 64 bit, graphics card in use)

qt qt5 cad

1 Answers

  1. ODA Drawings Explorer

    To install ODA Drawings Explorer (formerly known as Teigha Viewer, freeware but not free nor open source software):

    1. Download ODA Drawings Explorer for Linux 64-bit (DEB) manually or using commands below:

      cd ~/Downloads
wget -c https://download.opendesign.com/guestfiles/Demo/ODADrawingsExplorer_QT5_lnxX64_7.2dll_22.6.deb

    2. Install the dependency and then the downloaded DEB package

      sudo apt install qt5-default
sudo apt install ./ODADrawingsExplorer_QT5_lnxX64_7.2dll_22.6.deb

    This will install odadrawingsexplorer package and /usr/bin/ODADrawingsExplorer GUI app.

    screenshot

    ODA File Converter

    For ODA File Converter (formerly known as Teigha File Converter):

    1. Download ODA File Converter for Linux 64-bit (DEB) manually or using commands below:

      cd ~/Downloads
wget -c https://download.opendesign.com/guestfiles/Demo/ODAFileConverter_QT5_lnxX64_7.2dll_22.6.deb

    2. Install the package

      sudo apt install ./ODAFileConverter_QT5_lnxX64_7.2dll_22.6.deb

    Same as above but with it will install odafileconverter and /usr/bin/ODAFileConverter GUI app.

    DWG converter on FreeCAD

    To install and add the DWG converter to FreeCAD use latest stable FreeCAD from PPA:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-stable
sudo apt install freecad

    screenshot

    Note: the qt5-default package is not available for Ubuntu 21.04, you have to use some workaround. To get Qt 5.14 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS you can use this answer.

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