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Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

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Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

#21

Post by gen_greyface »

blobfish01 wrote: post #3
akiselev wrote: post #2

I haven't tried it out yet but screenshots are available here: https://gitlab.com/blobfish/cadseer/-/wikis/screenshots Looks pretty advanced already! It would be great to have more screenshots of the sketch mode though Did you write your own geometric modeling kernel or are you using an existing one? Edit: The git history goes back at least seven years! That's a lot of dedication

I made a screen cast a few days ago. https://vimeo.com/813202571 If you watch that you can see the sketch mode. Sketcher need a lot of love. No I didn't write a geometric kernel and I am using opencascade. I think my first git commit is about 10 years ago, but I didn't get serious until about 6 years ago.

i'm now gonna binge watch CAD screencast videos. very interesting.

Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

#22

Post by blobfish01 »

aetherspawn wrote: post #13

I 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. Doe…

No it doesn't have any assembly at this point. I have used the solvespace engine for the sketcher, so I think I can use it for assembly also ... someday.

Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

#23

Post by blobfish01 »

solarkraft wrote: post #12

Wow, 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 progr…

I am using opencascade and doing solid modeling vs mesh modeling. So cadseer is closer to something like freecad vs blender.

A list of advantages and disadvantages should be done by somebody without bias. I will give you an example: I have incorporated 'git' revision control. With every update, files are wrote to disk and a git commit is made. With this git setup, I decided to exclude the typical 'undo' command and have no temporary files. I consider this an advantage because you get revision control and very little, if at all, loss of work when a crash occurs and the code base is cleaner and eliminates a fruitful source of bugs. Others might consider this a disadvantage because there is no traditional undo command.

Yes this is my pet project and haven't done any type of promotion until now.

I actually worked on freecad for a while. People familiar with freecad will recognize some of the things I made for freecad that I used in cadseer. I think freecad is great, but I wanted the freedom to do my own things, for better or worse.

Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

#24

Post by blobfish01 »

carterschonwald wrote: post #11

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!

cadseer uses opencascade, so BRep. Any feedback is welcome.

Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

#26

Post by blobfish01 »

rcarmo wrote: post #16

Very 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?

Any feedback is welcome. You can import and export step files. There is no support of assemblies, so I am not sure what you will get.

Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

#27

Post by guitarbill »

atoav wrote: post #15
guitarbill wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

My experience has been similar. By viewer, I meant the CQ-editor. I've also had issues getting it to run. IMO, it tries to do too much.

Since Jupyter-CadQuery [0] uses Juypter as an "editor", it's much more mature and stable. And if the viewer blows up, the notebook still works and can simply be reloaded. Debugging via replay is great.

It's also nice that you can install Jupyter-CadQuery on a different machine, either via Conda or Docker. And the standalone viewer looks awesome. It's a really exciting ecosystem.

[0] https://github.com/bernhard-42/jupyter-cadquery/

Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

#28

Post by blobfish01 »

rafamvc wrote: post #7

What 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.

I have never used openscad, but from what I understand there would be 2 major differences. The first is the geometry engine. Openscad uses a mesh modeler, where cadseer uses boundary representation(opencascade). The second is the user interface. Openscad uses code/script to drive the model generation where cadseer uses user interaction to build a model generating dependency graph.

Cadseer is not better for stamping dies. That is just my background. I think cad is getting more into specialized industries now that the foundational stuff is more concrete. I don't think most people appreciate what it takes to develop a solid modeling kernel.

Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

#29

Post by rcarmo »

blobfish01 wrote: post #26
rcarmo wrote: post #16

Very 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?

Any feedback is welcome. You can import and export step files. There is no support of assemblies, so I am not sure what you will get.

That’s fine. I do mostly 3D printing, so although I do have some interlocking models I don’t have awesomely complex geometry. But having STEP support ensures I can move my data about to some degree.

Re: Show HN: Cadseer. a parametric solid modeling CAD desktop application

#30

Post by solarkraft »

blobfish01 wrote: post #23
solarkraft wrote: post #12

Wow, 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 progr…

I am using opencascade and doing solid modeling vs mesh modeling. So cadseer is closer to something like freecad vs blender. A list of advantages and disadvantages should be done by somebody without bias. I will give you an example: I have incorporated 'git' revision control. With every update, files are wrote to disk and a git commit is made. With this git setup, I decided to exclude the typical 'undo' command and h…

Thank you!

The git integration sounds brilliant and reminds me of Fusion 360's timeline functionality with which you can go back to an edit you made, change something about it and have the change propagated through all later edits: Sounds a lot like rebasing!

Now that you're promoting it and still calling it "alpha software": Are you putting effort into polishing it up? Doesn't make mucb sense for people to invest in it if it's going to remain in alpha state, after all (though it seems like you're using it successfully, so maybe it's not that bad?).

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