VariCAD Viewer is a free, compact, fast, easy-to-use and cross-platform graphical software implemented in Java and designed from the ground up to provide users with a comprehensive viewer of CAD (Computer-aided design) files.

The application is powered by the commercial and powerful VariCAD application (a separate review can be found on Softpedia), a 3D/2D CAD solution for mechanical engineering that features high performance and powerful tools to ease mechanical design tasks.

Key features include support for drawing and editing 2D CAD files, support for exporting both 2D and 3D CAD files, 3D modeling support, calculations of 2D sections and 3D objects, plotting support, printing support, title block and BOM support, as well as support for mechanical parts and symbol libraries.

It also supports wires, pipelines and shell modeling, supports crash tests, groups and 3D assemblies, supports surface development, and supports parameters and geometrical constraints, but optional. Its users interface is modern, intuitive and feature rich, designed to look the same on all supported OSes.

The software can interchange files with other CAD systems, which means that you will be able to import STEP (3D), DWG (2D), DXF (2D) and IGES (2D) files, as well as to export STEP (3D), DWG (2D), DXF (2D) and IGES (2D and 3D) files.

VariCAD Viewer is a cross-platform software and has been tested with a wide range of GNU/Linux distributions, supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian and openSUSE are recommended, as well as their derivatives.

For your convenience, the software is available for download as native installers for the aforementioned distributions of Linux in the DEB and RPM file formats. While VariCAD Viewer is free, the price for a standard VariCAD license is 599 EUR (750 USD) and you will get one-year support and upgrade.