How to install BricsCAD Shape on Linux

BricsCAD is a professional-grade architectural design program, aimed at making mechanical and structural designs quick and straightforward. The program supports many useful features, such as “Blockify” (search and clone existing entities in a drawing), a PDF importing tool, adaptive entity snapping, and more! Here’s how to install BricsCAD Shape on Linux.

Trial page signup

BricsCAD for Linux isn’t free. Instead, it’s trial software that users are allowed to evaluate freely. To gain access to the BricsCAD program on Linux, you must create a new account. To start the sign-up process, click here to go to the BricSys website. Then, select the “Try BricsCAD for free” button to move to the download page.

Upon clicking the try button, a signup page will appear. This signup page has several different login options, such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Email. Select one of the options, create an account, and log into the website.

After setting up an account on the BricsSys website, the download page will reveal itself to you. From here, follow the command-line instructions to get BricsCAD working on your Linux computer.

Ubuntu/Debian Installation Instructions

BricsCAD has first-class support for Ubuntu Linux, via a downloadable DEB package file. To download the DEB package, ensure you’re signed into the BricsSys website. Then, go to the download page.

Note: are you running Debian Linux and not Ubuntu? The Ubuntu release of BricsCAD works fine on most Debian Linux installations! Follow the instructions below, but replace apt with apt-get.

On the download page for BricsCAD, change the top drop-down menu to Linux. After that, change the second drop-down menu to “Ubuntu.”

Upon changing the second drop-down menu to “Ubuntu,” the third drop-down menu should be set to the language you speak. From there, click the “I agree with the terms of use” button. Then, click the green “Download” button to start the download process.

Let the BricsCAD DEB package download to your Linux PC. When the process is complete, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard and use the CD command to move the command-line into the “Downloads” directory.

cd ~/Downloads

Install the package to the system using the dpkg command.

sudo dpkg -i BricsCAD-*-amd64.deb

When the package finishes installing on your Linux PC, some errors may pop up in the terminal. Do not worry; these errors can easily be fixed. On Ubuntu, run the apt install -f command, and the problems should go away.

sudo apt install -f

Are you still having issues after installing the BricsCAD DEB package on your Linux PC? If so, follow this in-depth guide on how to correct dependency issues on Ubuntu.

Fedora/OpenSUSE Installation Instructions

There’s an RPM release of BricsCAD available for Linux users, which means that it’s possible to install the tool on both Fedora Linux and OpenSUSE Linux. To start, go to the download page, and ensure you are signed in to the BricsSys website.

On the BricsCAD download page, change the first drop-down menu to “Linux” to reveal the different Linux download options. Then, go to the second drop-down menu and change it to “Fedora, OpenSUSE.” Click the box next to “I agree with the terms of use (required),” and click the green “Download” button to grab the latest RPM release of BricsCAD.

Let the BricsCAD RPM file download to your Fedora or OpenSUSE Linux PC. Once the downloading process is complete, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard and follow the command-line instructions below to get the program up and running.

Fedora Linux

To install the BricsCAD app on Fedora Linux, start by moving the terminal session from the home directory (~) to the “Downloads” directory using the CD command below.

cd ~/Downloads

Inside of the “Downloads” directory, run the dnf install command to get the package fully set up on Fedora Linux.

sudo dnf install BricsCAD-*.rpm

OpenSUSE Linux

To install the BricsCAD program on OpenSUSE Linux, go to the “Downloads” directory with the CD command. Using this command is necessary, as the RPM package is saved there.

cd ~/Downloads

Once in the “Downloads” directory, use the zypper install to load up the BricsCAD RPM package onto the system.

sudo zypper install BricsCAD-*.rpm

Generic Linux Installation Instructions

BricsSys has a generic TarGZ release of the program for Linux users not on Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu or Debian. To get this version, head over to the BricsCAD download page, and ensure that you are logged in. Then, find the first drop-down menu and change it to “Linux.”

After changing the first drop-down menu to “Linux,” set the second one to “Custom Installation.” From there, check the box labeled “I agree with the terms of use (required),” and click the green “Download” button to start the download process.

When the download is complete, use the mv command to move the TarGZ file to your home directory.

mv ~/Downloads/BricsCAD-*.tar.gz ~/

Make a new “bricscad” folder using mkdir.

mkdir -p ~/bricscad

Extract the TarGZ archive of BricsCAD using the tar command.

tar xvf BricsCAD-*.tar.gz -C ~/bricscad

Run BricsCAD on your Linux PC with:

cd ~/bricscad ./bricscad.sh