How to build NaroCAD on your machine

As NaroCAD is an opensource CAD system, you may be interested to download the source and as much as you will need to add your functionality on top of it.

This post can be useful to you if you want to build NaroCAD on your own and also can be used by you to track Naro's problems.

What you need?
Firstly this are components that need to run Naro:
- Windows XP SP2 or greater (Vista, Windows 7 Beta 2 or newer)
- .NET 3.5 runtime (SP1 recommended). For Vista and Windows 7 users, simply go up-to-date via Windows Update and you will get it
- Visual Studio 2008 SP1 C++ Runtime. This is used to make OpenCascade wrappers to work. If Naro will start with an error like: cannot find get__Context method, means that the C++ Runtime on your machine was not detected. The erros can be found in NaroCAD folder under log\log.txt file
- OpenCascade distribution

What you need to develop Naro:
- SVN client. With this you will be able to get Naro's sources. One of the easiest to use interfaces is: TurtoiseSVN client.
- a C# IDE. In this categories mostly enters two alternatives: Visual C# Professional or Express 2008. Or if you like a bit rough but more featured than express, you may try the opensource SharpDevelop. I like more SharpDevelop as integrates with SVN, unit testing, but is much harder to debug with it comparing with Visual Studio counterpart

Steps to build NaroCAD:
- install all previous programs
- take sources. If you use a command line svn alternative, you should write in command line in any folder you want to get the sources this: svn co https://narocad.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/narocad/trunk narocad. If you use TurtosiseSVN, you will need to right click on any folder you want to get sources, choose SVN Checkout and in the address text box write: https://narocad.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/narocad/trunk
- double click on narocad\narocad.sln that should make start your installed IDE
- do Run

Later if you want to be up-to-date as you see a blog item about a new feature and you want to test it, go to that folder where the sources are and execute: svn update by command line or if you use Turtoise, right click and pick the option: SVN Update and rebuild and run NaroCAD again.