Download QCAD
Installation overview

QCAD from Flatpak

This page guides you through installing QCAD from a Flatpak on Linux operating systems.

Open a terminal

We will install QCAD using a terminal, as this is the preferred way to manage a Linux system. GUI applications for installing Flatpaks exist, but are not covered here. Open the Terminal application. A usually blackish window opens with text like username@host:~$, where username is your username (here qcad) and penguin is the host name:

A freshly opened terminal window

Installing Flatpak

Copy the following into the terminal (right-click to paste) and hit Enter. This command is for distributions that use the apt package manager, such as Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, elementary OS and Raspberry Pi OS:

sudo apt install flatpak

If the terminal answers that apt was not found, your distribution uses a different package manager. On distributions based on Fedora or Red Hat — Fedora, RHEL, CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux — use dnf instead:

sudo dnf install flatpak
  • If the terminal says Flatpak is already the newest version, skip to the next section.
  • If it asks “Do you want to continue?”, hit Enter again.
  • If it says you are not allowed to do this, ignore it for now — you might already have Flatpak installed.
  • Wait for the installation to complete (typically a few minutes). When the username@penguin:~$ line appears in green again, it is done.

Finding out the CPU type

Type the following and hit Enter:

uname -m

This displays your CPU type, for example aarch64 or x86_64:

  • aarch64 — a 64-bit ARM CPU.
  • x86_64 — a 64-bit Intel or AMD CPU.

Keep in mind which CPU type you have.

Downloading the correct QCAD package

Open the download area from the link you received after your purchase and download the Flatpak file for your CPU:

  • 64-bit Intel or AMD CPU: scroll down to Linux > Qt 6 > 64-bit Intel.
  • 64-bit ARM CPU: scroll down to Linux > Qt 6 > ARM (64bit).

Below the title you scrolled to, click the item with Flatpak in its name to download the Flatpak file to your Downloads folder. Wait for the download to complete.

Installing QCAD

Go back to the terminal and navigate to the Downloads folder:

cd ~/Downloads

Then install the Flatpak file you downloaded:

flatpak install --user filename.flatpak

Replace filename.flatpak with the name of the file you downloaded, for example qcad-27.x.x-pro-linux-qt6-x86_64.flatpak, where 27.x.x is the exact version number of the package:

Starting the QCAD Flatpak installation in the terminal

Flatpak automatically installs the required runtime (dependencies). The terminal asks if you want to install it and if you want to proceed:

Terminal asking to proceed with the installation

Hit Enter to confirm each question. When the installation has finished, the terminal shows “Installation complete.”

Running QCAD

To start QCAD, type:

flatpak run org.qcad.QCAD

Or use the launcher at the top left, where you can find QCAD:

QCAD in the application launcher

QCAD starts with its welcome screen, where you can choose some default settings. Once you confirm, the QCAD application window is shown and you can start working:

The QCAD application window running from a Flatpak

Running command line tools

After installing a Flatpak, you won't have access to the command line tool launcher scripts (dwg2pdf, dwg2bmp, …). One way to still run the command line tools is to pass the launcher scripts as arguments to Flatpak:

flatpak run org.qcad.QCAD -autostart scripts/Pro/Tools/Dwg2Pdf/Dwg2Pdf.js

The launcher scripts for the various QCAD command line tools are:

  • merge: scripts/Tools/MergeDrawings/MergeDrawings.js
  • bmp2dwg: scripts/Pro/Tools/Bmp2Dwg/Bmp2Dwg.js
  • bbox: scripts/Pro/Tools/BoundingBox/BoundingBox.js
  • dwg2bmp: scripts/Pro/Tools/Dwg2Bmp/Dwg2Bmp.js
  • dwg2csv: scripts/Pro/Tools/Dwg2Csv/Dwg2Csv.js
  • dwg2dwg: scripts/Pro/Tools/Dwg2Dwg/Dwg2Dwg.js
  • dwg2maptiles: scripts/Pro/Tools/Dwg2MapTiles/Dwg2MapTiles.js
  • dwg2pdf: scripts/Pro/Tools/Dwg2Pdf/Dwg2Pdf.js
  • dwg2svg: scripts/Pro/Tools/Dwg2Svg/Dwg2Svg.js
  • dwgexplode: scripts/Pro/Tools/DwgExplode/DwgExplode.js
  • dwghatch: scripts/Pro/Tools/DwgHatch/DwgHatch.js
  • dwghatcharea: scripts/Pro/Tools/DwgHatchArea/DwgHatchArea.js
  • dwginfo: scripts/Pro/Tools/DwgInfo/DwgInfo.js
  • dwgmapconvert: scripts/Pro/Tools/DwgMapConvert/DwgMapConvert.js
  • svg2dwg: scripts/Pro/Tools/Svg2Dwg/Svg2Dwg.js
  • dwgnest (QCAD/CAM): scripts/Nest/Tools/DwgNest/DwgNest.js