Very cool! What internal rep are you using? B rep or sdf or other? It does seem like the choice of data structure has a huge impact on what’s easy vs not.
I’ll try it out!
Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
11–20 of 33 posts
Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
#12Wow, it looks pretty advanced! How does it generally compare to other (free) software in terms of features? What are the advantages over other systems, what are its disadvantages?
Have you been working on this thing by yourself? Have you ever shared it before? This looks like it has gotten very little attention so far, especially in relation to how good it seems.
What was your main motivation for building a new program rather than improving an existing one like FreeCAD?
Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
#13I watched your video and I just wanted to say that it looks really good. It could very easily be used instead of i.e. SolidWorks to make basic parts. I am very impressed that you were able to do this mostly on your own.
Maybe you could get some momentum with it in the 3D printing community if you made a nice website for it and did a YouTube series i.e. "How to design and print a phone holder" or things like that.
Does it have assembly mode? I imagine implementing Assembly constraints would be very difficult.
Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
#14What is the difference between this and openscad? I want to love openscad but it is hard to encapsulate and distribute code, as the library system is non existent. Why is this better for stamping dies? I don't know much about it, but often wondered why there aren't cads specifically made for every fabrication style.
This appears to implement nontrivial features such as constraint solving and the ability to easily fillet edges. I like the idea of programming geometry, but never got the hang of the OpenSCAD language. I eventually settled on JSCAD.
I've found CadQuery to be a nice replacement for OpenSCAD. The viewer isn't as good, but using CadQuery + Jupyter Notebook is real nice. And it does fillets/chamfers, plus you can reference geometry. Bit of a learning curve though
Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
This appears to implement nontrivial features such as constraint solving and the ability to easily fillet edges. I like the idea of programming geometry, but never got the hang of the OpenSCAD language. I eventually settled on JSCAD.
I've found CadQuery to be a nice replacement for OpenSCAD. The viewer isn't as good, but using CadQuery + Jupyter Notebook is real nice. And it does fillets/chamfers, plus you can reference geometry. Bit of a learning curve though
There is also CQ-editor which is a graphical frontend, but I did not manage to get the official release to run on Ubuntu 22 as it threw some import errors.
Cadquery is great, I use it to parametrically create parts for electronics libraries (so a lot of similar looking geometries with slightly different dimensions).
Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
#16Very impressive. I’ve been struggling to get off OpenSCAD and into proper parametric modeling (am using Blender with CAD Sketcher since I just can’t abide FreeCAD), and after taking a look at the screencast you linked to, I will be giving this a go on both Mac and Fedora.
Do you/will you support STEP files?
Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
#17What is the difference between this and openscad? I want to love openscad but it is hard to encapsulate and distribute code, as the library system is non existent. Why is this better for stamping dies? I don't know much about it, but often wondered why there aren't cads specifically made for every fabrication style.
This appears to implement nontrivial features such as constraint solving and the ability to easily fillet edges. I like the idea of programming geometry, but never got the hang of the OpenSCAD language. I eventually settled on JSCAD.
There's also implicitcad, that can use haskell, and does automatic fillets.
Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
#18This is definitely something the 3d printing community would be interested in. The lack of a good open source cad program has been an issue.
Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
#19Very impressive. I’ve been struggling to get off OpenSCAD and into proper parametric modeling (am using Blender with CAD Sketcher since I just can’t abide FreeCAD), and after taking a look at the screencast you linked to, I will be giving this a go on both Mac and Fedora. Do you/will you support STEP files?
openscad is parametric, it is very parametric. by some tokens it is more parametric than the "proper parametric modeler" it is however missing a constraint solver. that would be my dream cad software, a proper scene description language to model in and a built in robust constraint library so you don't have to program your constraints from scratch.
Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application
#20Looks like a CSG type modeler, but visual instead of code based, and with some kind of really cool blend operation?
Pretty neat!