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Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

cadhub.xyz

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Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#51

Post by grawp »

freeopinion wrote: post #27
rowanG077 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't https://github.com/CadQuery/CQ-editor work on MacOS? I don't really see how development has fizzed out. There have been quite a few commits the last couple of months.

I wanted to kick the tires on CadQuery, but I had to install and understand Anaconda first. Any tool that requires me to understand a build system or a language package manager to correctly and safely build the software before I can use it is not ready for prime time. If this was important for my life, I might put in the effort. If it is for passing curiosity, I probably won't. Especially when it impacts not just thi…

I feel you. (Un)fortunately for me CQ is important enough because OpenSCAD and similar are not CADs... they are just simple generators without an ability to reference, use already drawn things. Whereas CadQuery has the main feature which is missing from OpenSCAD directly in its name: "Query".

I'm actively working on bringing CadQuery and all its dependencies to Nix because *Conda is an abomination of highest order.

Moreover the pywrap and OCP which are CadQuery's dependencies are even much worse. They are like galleries of every DevOps anti-pattern ever invented. The more you dive into them the more horrible it gets.

CQ is actually nice though.

Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#52

Post by app4soft »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #40
irevdev wrote: post #35

Hey, I created CadHub. I'm really bullish on software driven CAD, myself and other CadHub volunteers talk regularly about a future in which Mechanical Engineering and design is very similar to software engineering. I'll be the first person it admit that some of the current CodeCAD tools aren't production ready, OpenSCAD for example I can't imagine being used by mechanical engineers. So the idea is mostly about unifyi…

Howdy! Well we absolutely need more open source CAD tools. That said as a mechanical engineer for going on two decades now, I really get no value from this kind of mechanical design. I grew up on Solidworks and now use OnShape. That kind of physical modeling is very important. Being able to click on a face and sketch some geometry and then extrude it really feels like the right modality for me. I’d really love to see…

> I grew up on Solidworks and now use OnShape... I’d really love to see more investment in that kind of parametric visual CAD.

Has You tried SolveSpace app?

[0] https://solvespace.com

[1] https://git.io/SolveSpace3x (latest nightly builds + various useful resources)

Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#53

Post by app4soft »

ur-whale wrote: post #50
xor99 wrote: post #39

https://www.libfive.com/ Libfive is quite good to check out too but yes openscad and cadquery are the most used.

> Libfive is quite good to check out too Lots of potential, but IMO not really usable for real world work. For example, there isn't any (or I haven't found any) simple way to create a clean fillet between two complex surfaces other than blending them and hoping for the best. Documentation of the API is lacking, except for a bunch of examples in scheme (not exactly the most popular language for CAD folks). Python API…

> Lots of potential, but IMO not really usable for real world work.

What about Antimony and VisualScriptCAD?[0,1]

[0] https://github.com/mkeeter/antimony

[1] https://github.com/kovacsv/VisualScriptCAD

Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#54

Post by ahupp »

sk2020 wrote: post #17

Programmatically generating geometry is very cool, but I don’t know of anyone doing real work with it. OpenSCAD is probably the best power-hobbyist software I know of for this purpose. AutoDesk seems to be trying this approach with DyanamoBIM, which I’m excited to experiment with (I just don’t get visual programming though). Personally, I would never consider a web-based software for professional use. An opaque profi…

> Personally, I would never consider a web-based software for professional use.

I've seen a lot of enthusiasm for OnShape (a relatively new web-based CAD tool) among professional CAD users, particularly when there's more than a handful of people working on one project.

Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#55

Post by somewhereoutth »

xor99 wrote: post #38
jpgleeson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grasshopper, which Dynamo is really trying to compete against, is in wide use in the architecture world.

Yeah these are mostly used for architecture. Seemingly exclusively to produce the same generative style

Styles are going to be strongly influenced by the tools used to communicate them, so possibly no surprise

Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#56

Post by dividedbyzero »

I've been using CadQuery [1] a lot of late to develop custom parts for 3D printing, and while it's nice to be able to write plain Python and the abstractions are somewhat more intuitive than OpenSCAD, it's still kind of brittle and complex parts are hard work.

There are things CAD-as-code excels at, but once you leave the happy path of simple primitives with a few holes and a bit of chamfer, I found things can get really ugly real quick. Organic shapes are very hard to construct, and simply generating polylines or the like either fails because OpenSCAD takes literal hours to render or because CadQuery throws some weird error halfway through and I just can't get it to work.

I'd love to see a free or at least affordable (for hobbyists) CAD solution that isn't code-only, cloud-only, totally crippled in terms of functionality, or extremely arcane. I believe Fusion 360 went cloud-only (or almost) last year or so, and between Fusion 360 and FreeCAD (which I tried to learn, but couldn't figure out) there seems to be a big opportunity for an affordable, user-friendly, open CAD tool for the 3D printer owning masses (there are dozens of us!)

1: https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery

Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#57

Post by TaylorAlexander »

amenghra wrote: post #44
irevdev wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"why not both" Direct manipulation/GUI will always be faster at producing content. It worth exploring how much the two can we wedded with code synthesis. I get that code synthesis attempts normally produce poor quality code, but maybe a hybrid work flow could work between using the GUI and fixing up code. It's a shame that the current CodeCAD tools have very little interaction with he part viewer. https://www.youtube…

Onshape is a good combination of visual + you can set exact values for things. I’m always happy to try new tools, but I tend to fallback to Blender for artsy stuff and Onshape for more precise parts. I suck at 3d modeling, so I evaluate tools from a “how much value can a noob get” point of view.

That is definitely an important user perspective. My angle is that I am a professional robotics engineer as well as an open source evangelist. I design a lot of open source CAD and I’d really like it if the CAD package itself was open source as it is important to me to have a community of users who fork my designs. So far open source CAD does not feel adequate as a design tool for me. FreeCAD is conceptually the closest but it seems like the project needs more investment. I recently tried it again and it seems extremely simple compared to Solidworks or Onshape.

Honestly CAD is very complex software and is not well suited to a single engineer working in their hobby time. I think a huge reason Blender has been successful is that they built a sustainable crowd funding system. They currently pull in $166k each month with that system: https://fund.blender.org/

I am pleased to see also Godot engine (a similar type of tool) pulling in over $7k/month (last I checked) on Patreon.

Anyway there is a “business model” for open source projects even if they don’t sell anything. Call it a funding model. I think open source projects need to get a handle on that for anything that exceeds a very small team.

I am trying to build this kind of sustainable funding for my own open source farming robot (link in profile) and I think we’re going to go with Open Collective at least as a front end.

https://opencollective.com/

For fiscal hosting we’ve applied to the Open Collective Foundation and the Software Freedom Conservancy.

https://sfconservancy.org/

I think open source CAD really needs a funding plan like this. It’s a very large software project and we’ve seen how Blender and Godot are able to actually get traction and produce a compelling program with resources like that.

Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#58

Post by [deleted] »

jpgleeson wrote: post #26
sk2020 wrote: post #17

Programmatically generating geometry is very cool, but I don’t know of anyone doing real work with it. OpenSCAD is probably the best power-hobbyist software I know of for this purpose. AutoDesk seems to be trying this approach with DyanamoBIM, which I’m excited to experiment with (I just don’t get visual programming though). Personally, I would never consider a web-based software for professional use. An opaque profi…

Grasshopper, which Dynamo is really trying to compete against, is in wide use in the architecture world.

[deleted]

Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#59

Post by andreseg »

jpgleeson wrote: post #26
sk2020 wrote: post #17

Programmatically generating geometry is very cool, but I don’t know of anyone doing real work with it. OpenSCAD is probably the best power-hobbyist software I know of for this purpose. AutoDesk seems to be trying this approach with DyanamoBIM, which I’m excited to experiment with (I just don’t get visual programming though). Personally, I would never consider a web-based software for professional use. An opaque profi…

Grasshopper, which Dynamo is really trying to compete against, is in wide use in the architecture world.

I would encourage looking into Rhino3D and Grasshopper3D. As @jpgleeson mentions - this is already widely used by architects as they move from a world of buildings made up of mass-produced identical components (e.g., every brick is the same shape and size), to a world where mass customization is possible (e.g., every brick has variable shape, massing, structural properties, etc.). Being able to prescribe that programmatically has a lot of promise. Tools like Grasshopper already enable some of this customization via code as you can see here https://developer.rhino3d.com/guides/rhinopython/ghpython-ca...

Plugging into existing frameworks (like Rhino) is quite easy and can open the door to other realms of optimization/simulation for the designs you are scripting. For instance you could leverage generative design (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HLRtXSG7fQ) and other software that can be used to evaluate designs according against variety of criteria ranging from structural integrity, to environmental performance, to 3d-printability, etc. If there’s open source frameworks you can plug into, even better.. and if not.. then maybe that’s what’s missing: an easy standard way for various opensource projects to share and edit information.

Programmatically-defined designs make sense to me only if you can easily change parameters to quickly produce, evaluate, and optimize the designs/variations/results. Otherwise - Better to use a GUI that allows for more direct (and less abstracted) expression of designer intent

Similarly open source CAD makes sense if it can be augmented by other open source projects - including sharing and editing data from these various projects

Re: Code CAD – Use code to create CAD models

#60

Post by thedavidprice »

irevdev wrote: post #35

Hey, I created CadHub. I'm really bullish on software driven CAD, myself and other CadHub volunteers talk regularly about a future in which Mechanical Engineering and design is very similar to software engineering. I'll be the first person it admit that some of the current CodeCAD tools aren't production ready, OpenSCAD for example I can't imagine being used by mechanical engineers. So the idea is mostly about unifyi…

> So the idea is mostly about unifying the community with a website dedicated to this paradigm, and if we're lucky we play a small role in promoting more development and better tools in the future.

Yes, please!

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