allow me to introduce myself as a new-to-be FreeCAD user.
I'm Francis, live in Belgium and I've worked as a 3D-designer with several commercial applications (Inventor, Solidworks, AutoCad Mech...) before switching career in a totally different direction for almost 6 years now.
But somehow I never got cured of the 3D-designing bug that seems to stay around, hibernating until it wants to pup up again with the urge of designing "things".
Since I am switching from Windows to Linux for various reasons on my home computer, I was looking for an open source CAD package which is similar like Solidworks and found FreeCad to be very, very promising (reading the comments on this forum, the manuals and other website reviews makes me curious how FreeCAD compares to the commercial colleagues).
Anyhow, enough said about me and onward to the question;
Is there a way to create a portable FreeCAD app for using it in Windows (32- or 64-bit)?
Could it be as simple as extracting the installer file into a directory, double click on "FreeCAD.exe" and voila?
Unfortunately it is not (tried it, only launches the GUI without any module loaded and no other option but "EXIT").
Would one need to compile it from source packages?
I have no experience with compiling my own application so far, but willing to learn
.If someone could point me in the right direction, I would be very grateful.
I've already tried searching the net and this forum, but no luck.
Kr,
Francis
NOTE 1: I found portable once on non-official websites - i.e. http://www.portableapps.com, but they are outdated release wise.
NOTE 2: the reason as to why Windows? I work offshore and all available computers run Windows (I know, I know...)
NOTE 3: the portable app would allow me to play around in my spare time offshore and keep working on that model in Linux @ home.
NOTE 4: as a guest user offshore I don't have the admin rights to install FreeCAD, so a portable version would save the day (or night, depending on how you look @ it).
.