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PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

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Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#21

Post by justinclift »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #8

If anyone is curious I started a discussion forum [1] with the goal of researching possible paths to good quality open source CAD, after an off-hand tweet of mine about open source CAD got significant traction on twitter. Based on what I know so far, it seems that FreeCAD might be finally getting the investment it needs to mature as a real option. There is an organization called Ondsel which is taking on a lot of UI…

Cool, that sounds hopeful. FreeCAD's Assembly workbench mess (aka several competing ones instead of a single blessed one) is why I stopped using it. So if that gets solved it'll be very welcome (by me). :)

Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#22

Post by RomanKuzmenko »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #20
RomanKuzmenko wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don’t think FreeCAD needs an alternative. It’s good enough for most needs and it’s maturing. But it needs to be used for what it is good for: visual workflows. FreeCAD and all other CAD tools (that might be needed or preferred for some workflows) need to get out of the business of storing CAD data in proprietary binary files that are no good for any collaboration. Instead, either natively or through plug…

Well, as a professional mechanical engineer with 20 years of cad experience, I disagree that FreeCAD is “good enough for most needs”. It didn’t even have assembly support until a preview of that feature was added to a fork a month or so ago, and it was a non-starter before that. I currently believe FreeCAD is the best hope we have but there’s a long road ahead before it is “good enough”. As far as storing cad files a…

That’s why I said other CAD tools can be used for some workflows. For most humans interacting with technology nowadays out there FreeCAD will do. Anyway, even if I’m wrong about FreeCAD, PartCAD doesn’t have much to do with what happens between “Load” and “Save”. CAD is a tool that some people will use. PartCAD should support as many of those tools as possible.

The question of format used to store part info is more relevant to PartCAD. However I do not think PartCAD should prescribe any. PartCAD must be modular and support as many formats as it can. And let the competition decide. Maybe the supported/compatible CAD kernels will contribute to the competition of file formats. Maybe the file format chosen by the community (e.g. for LLM related reasons) will contribute to what CAD tools support. We’ll see in 20 years.

I personally don’t think the community at a whole will gravitate towards anything like OpenCASCADE file formats. I find CadQuery and build123d more promising (no matter what’s under their hood at the moment). I believe it must be human-readable (and, thus, LLM-readable) text. But CadQuery and build123d are not the end of the evolution. I’m sure we will face next technology iterations that are at least more LLM friendly, secure (e.g. to prevent arbitrary I/O from code), and more structured (to help retain the code structure and formatting in the “Load”-“Change”-“Save” cycle).

PartCAD will be there to facilitate modular design and collaboration, and to include as many people and their tools as possible. Not to facilitate any closed formats or tool ecosystems that commercial tool vendors are trying to prescribe to us today, no matter how convincing their arguments sound. Large profits enable generation of very convincing arguments.

No matter how difficult it is going to be to “store models as code”, I personally believe the humanity will succeed at that. However PartCAD will support all common file formats. It currently (2 days after a preview release which somehow went huge) supports CadQuery, build123d and STEP files.

Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#23

Post by froggerwasgreat »

adastra22 wrote: post #18
RomanKuzmenko wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don’t think FreeCAD needs an alternative. It’s good enough for most needs and it’s maturing. But it needs to be used for what it is good for: visual workflows. FreeCAD and all other CAD tools (that might be needed or preferred for some workflows) need to get out of the business of storing CAD data in proprietary binary files that are no good for any collaboration. Instead, either natively or through plug…

I understand and agree with that. But to push back on the first sentence, I really don't think FreeCAD is acceptable. It's clunky, it's notorious for crashing on large models, its user interface is antiquated and really difficult to learn, and the code base is a monstrosity.

I only draw simple hobby projects from time to time and have given freecad a chance several times, but it can't even begin to keep up with commercial tools.

Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#24

Post by RomanKuzmenko »

adastra22 wrote: post #18
RomanKuzmenko wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don’t think FreeCAD needs an alternative. It’s good enough for most needs and it’s maturing. But it needs to be used for what it is good for: visual workflows. FreeCAD and all other CAD tools (that might be needed or preferred for some workflows) need to get out of the business of storing CAD data in proprietary binary files that are no good for any collaboration. Instead, either natively or through plug…

I understand and agree with that. But to push back on the first sentence, I really don't think FreeCAD is acceptable. It's clunky, it's notorious for crashing on large models, its user interface is antiquated and really difficult to learn, and the code base is a monstrosity.

Yeah, it did steal some of my time and gave me some gray hair too. However as I mentioned in another comment, PartCAD is not there to replace existing CAD tools. It’s there to extend the definition of computer aided design to include modularity and collaboration. The tools that we called CAD-tools will be called “CAD Design GUI” tools. For decades their marketing departments have successfully sold us the idea of those tools being the complete technology solution. Charging ridiculous amounts of money for any collaboration feature. And I don’t blame them. They are smart. But we, as a humanity, need to be even smarter. Smarter than agreeing to having no “merge/rebase” functionality in 2023.

Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#25

Post by RomanKuzmenko »

timschmidt wrote: post #4

They don't seem to be aware of https://github.com/nophead/NopSCADlib which has been around for an age.

Thanks for the link. I’ll definitely study that. I’m not sure at the moment whether NopSCADlib has exactly the same ambitions or not. But it certainly deserves to be learned from. PartCAD has OpenSCAD support pretty high up on the todo list.

Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#26

Post by rjsw »

nickpinkston wrote: post #5

The current state of this is that there are PDM (Product Data Management) packages for each major CAD package [1] that handle version control, lists of components ("Bill of Material" in our biz). There is the concept of CAD "assemblies" which are many individual parts assembled together, which can themselves be members of bigger CAD assemblies until the global product has all subassemblies. There are then component l…

The main bit of STEP that I designed is how to model properties that depend on other property values, it doesn't get much use in CAD systems right now but there does seem some interest in getting it better used in the future.

Another area of current work is in adding UUIDs to a model so that after doing a round trip from STEP into a proprietary CAD system and back to STEP you can work out which bits of the model are new and which not. This could be useful for parts libraries as well.

Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#27

Post by adastra22 »

RomanKuzmenko wrote: post #24
adastra22 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand and agree with that. But to push back on the first sentence, I really don't think FreeCAD is acceptable. It's clunky, it's notorious for crashing on large models, its user interface is antiquated and really difficult to learn, and the code base is a monstrosity.

Yeah, it did steal some of my time and gave me some gray hair too. However as I mentioned in another comment, PartCAD is not there to replace existing CAD tools. It’s there to extend the definition of computer aided design to include modularity and collaboration. The tools that we called CAD-tools will be called “CAD Design GUI” tools. For decades their marketing departments have successfully sold us the idea of thos…

This sub thread isn’t about PartCAD.

But on the topic of CAD/CAM systems, there IS value in having a single workflow tool from design to manufacture. Fusion 360 shows how beneficial it can be to have these different aspects of the workflow be seamlessly integrated.

There’s no justifiable reason to Balkanize all the CAD tools based on function. Users don’t want that.

Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#28

Post by timschmidt »

RomanKuzmenko wrote: post #25
timschmidt wrote: post #4

They don't seem to be aware of https://github.com/nophead/NopSCADlib which has been around for an age.

Thanks for the link. I’ll definitely study that. I’m not sure at the moment whether NopSCADlib has exactly the same ambitions or not. But it certainly deserves to be learned from. PartCAD has OpenSCAD support pretty high up on the todo list.

Project goals may differ slightly (NopSCADlib evolved somewhat naturally out of building CAD, CAD assemblies, Bills of Material, and assembly instructions for 3D printers) but there is a ton of overlap in functionality.

Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#29

Post by RomanKuzmenko »

adastra22 wrote: post #27
RomanKuzmenko wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it did steal some of my time and gave me some gray hair too. However as I mentioned in another comment, PartCAD is not there to replace existing CAD tools. It’s there to extend the definition of computer aided design to include modularity and collaboration. The tools that we called CAD-tools will be called “CAD Design GUI” tools. For decades their marketing departments have successfully sold us the idea of thos…

This sub thread isn’t about PartCAD. But on the topic of CAD/CAM systems, there IS value in having a single workflow tool from design to manufacture. Fusion 360 shows how beneficial it can be to have these different aspects of the workflow be seamlessly integrated. There’s no justifiable reason to Balkanize all the CAD tools based on function. Users don’t want that.

Users who want to continue paying for the value of having all tools under one roof can continue doing so. From time to time they might not be opposed to the idea of importing a part or two from a public repository. At least for some simulation tests. They might also find value in using a proprietary private PartCAD repository when they migrate from one all-under-one-roof tool to another after being squeezed dry by the previous vendor.

No one really knows what all of the users want. The commercial tool vendors would tell us that all users want exactly what they sell. My subjective experience suggested a hypothesis that some users might want something different. After two days of PartCAD’s initial revision being out there, it would be fair to say that a lot of users want it. The demand and feedback exceeded all expectations.

Re: PartCAD the first package manager for CAD models

#30

Post by RomanKuzmenko »

adastra22 wrote: post #11
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #8

If anyone is curious I started a discussion forum [1] with the goal of researching possible paths to good quality open source CAD, after an off-hand tweet of mine about open source CAD got significant traction on twitter. Based on what I know so far, it seems that FreeCAD might be finally getting the investment it needs to mature as a real option. There is an organization called Ondsel which is taking on a lot of UI…

I'm working on an MPL-licensed, free forever CAD environment for molecular nanotechnology. It is extremely early, indeed I hesitate to even mention it as it is currently undergoing the final stages of a rewrite to run on a game engine back-end, and it isn't much more than boilerplate at the moment. But we have a small community of people interested in this, and we are currently raising money to support further develo…

I reread the sub-thread and I can see how my attention got carried away from the topic. The maintenance of models might be perceived as an add on to a much more scientific-heavy CAD workflows. The value of engineering tools is not going to go away no matter how data exchange and collaboration tools advance. I hope you find people who can help with the scientific-heavy work that would certainly require funding.

However I would still like to learn how PartCAD (and part-time open source hobbyists behind it, without any funding) can help nonetheless.

I’d really like to learn what are the modelling needs of molecular nanotechnology. Would it need another packaging tool, or just a separate index repository to main another set of parts? Is there any chance you can consider the persistence layer being modular and implemented as code from day one? I would appreciate an opportunity to debate about it with an experienced professional.

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