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CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser

mattferraro.dev

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Re: CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser

#31

Post by jnovek »

gen3 wrote: post #6

As someone who learned CAD on autodesk (inventor) ages ago, the only free modeling software I could grasp after working for a few hours was Onshape. Usability seems to be a real problem in this space, Freecad for example seemed to have a billion ways to do the same thing, but in the end only one of them was the real way, some tutorials leaving me with a model that doesn't conform. Awesome work! It seems like a hard p…

Ugh Freecad. Love hate relationship.

I pretty much only use the Part Design, Sketcher and Spreadsheet workbenches. Those mostly work OK together. I don’t dare branch out because of poor interoperability between benches; I sometimes use the Part bench as well but it’s so fiddly because you had to take it through two internal format changes to make it work in Part Design.

Hoping that one of the many open source CAD projects can supplant it eventually.

Re: CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser

#32

Post by beeboobaa3 »

samwillis wrote: post #30

I'm very excited about what Matt is building, the world desperately needs a good open source parametric CAD package. One where the UI/UX is designed to be as "easy" to use a SolidWorks. The biggest reason this hasn't happened so far is the lack of a truly capable parametric kernel, Truck, the kernel that Matt is using looks like an incredible project and exactly whats needed. The only other kennel till now that been…

> lands stable fillets (surprisingly one of the hardest features to make stable)

Interesting. Any chance you could explain why fillets are hard(er)?

Re: CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser

#33

Post by Jhos »

andybak wrote: post #4

Weirdly hard to find the actual project urls: https://mattferraro.github.io/CADmium/ https://github.com/MattFerraro/CADmium

Quoting directly from that github: "Status: Early prototype. This tool is not yet an MVP, but is being developed in the open. Please do not share this to HN or Reddit or things like that."

Re: CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser

#34

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

sliptonic wrote: post #26
ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the cloud bits I think the most notable way they are different at the moment is that they have their new configuration variable sets functionality, which maybe core FreeCAD hasn't agreed on yet (it's also not finished I believe). Ondsel are seemingly using that to integrate with recalculation of designs in the cloud compute facility (think Thingiverse customiser but a bit less basic). I eagerly anticipate…

Correct. Variable sets (varsets) is partially merged into upstream main development branch. Other work is ongoing. Varsets are much more important than just our web service though. Being able to configure and control variants in a design is underappreciated and will be essential to having complex assemblies with multiple copies of identical parts. Imagine a hinge that is reused in many places in the design. The curre…

Yes -- I've seen the video and spent some time absorbing it and I'm really excited to see that. I really enjoy using spreadsheets and configuration tables but there are some really maddening aspects; I understand global recalculation is kind of unavoidable, but I'm not sure why that has to happen when I change the font of a cell, for example :-)

Thank you for all of your work -- I am away from my CAD projects at the moment but I will be digging properly into 2024.2 as soon as I can.

Re: CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser

#36

Post by loughnane »

nicce wrote: post #23
gen3 wrote: post #6

As someone who learned CAD on autodesk (inventor) ages ago, the only free modeling software I could grasp after working for a few hours was Onshape. Usability seems to be a real problem in this space, Freecad for example seemed to have a billion ways to do the same thing, but in the end only one of them was the real way, some tutorials leaving me with a model that doesn't conform. Awesome work! It seems like a hard p…

Onshape is an excellent tool in terms of performance and usability. As total newbie I was able to design fully working robot arm with 3d printed joints, design all the motors, their placements and other stuff and even animate movement. The model even worked on my phone, while it was not very practical...

I had 10y or so experience with CAD when onshape showed up around 2014. You could tell from the beginning that they cared a ton about usability and had their minds wrapped around how people use CAD. It’s only got better since.

I highly recommend the cadmium folks just soak themselves in onshape’s UX.

Re: CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser

#38

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

sliptonic wrote: post #26
ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the cloud bits I think the most notable way they are different at the moment is that they have their new configuration variable sets functionality, which maybe core FreeCAD hasn't agreed on yet (it's also not finished I believe). Ondsel are seemingly using that to integrate with recalculation of designs in the cloud compute facility (think Thingiverse customiser but a bit less basic). I eagerly anticipate…

Correct. Variable sets (varsets) is partially merged into upstream main development branch. Other work is ongoing. Varsets are much more important than just our web service though. Being able to configure and control variants in a design is underappreciated and will be essential to having complex assemblies with multiple copies of identical parts. Imagine a hinge that is reused in many places in the design. The curre…

As an aside, I would love to see Brodie Fairhall's take on varsets at some point. His video on advanced parametric modelling with the spreadsheets is an epic of the genre.

Re: CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser

#39

Post by tredre3 »

IshKebab wrote: post #28
gen3 wrote: post #6

As someone who learned CAD on autodesk (inventor) ages ago, the only free modeling software I could grasp after working for a few hours was Onshape. Usability seems to be a real problem in this space, Freecad for example seemed to have a billion ways to do the same thing, but in the end only one of them was the real way, some tutorials leaving me with a model that doesn't conform. Awesome work! It seems like a hard p…

SolveSpace is good. It's the only free CAD software I've found that's remotely usable (yes including FreeCAD). Unfortunately it has some pretty big missing features, notably bevels & filets.

I also like SolveSpace a lot. I use it to design small things all the time. Tiny single file program, very responsive interface. It's also pretty intuitive (if you're already familiar with CAD constraints and parametric modelling concepts). There was a burst of activity 2-3 years ago so I was hopeful we'd get filets and maybe better error messages but it hasn't happened yet.

Ondsel is also increasingly good. They've released a new version recently: https://ondsel.com/blog/ondsel-es-2024-2/

Their website login-wall downloads for whatever reason, so go to github: https://github.com/Ondsel-Development/FreeCAD/releases

Re: CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser

#40

Post by WillAdams »

Why in a browser if it's local-first?

Solvespace has the benefit of being a single download/executable.

It also has a constraint solver which has been used in a couple of projects: CADsketcher as you noted, and Dune 3D: https://github.com/dune3d/dune3d where the author noted:

>I ended up directly using solvespace's solver instead of the suggested wrapper code since it didn't expose all of the features I needed. I also had to patch the solver to make it sufficiently fast for the kinds of equations I was generating by symbolically solving equations where applicable.

Any relation to: https://github.com/jay3sh/cadmium ?

Also, for CAD kernels, Manifold was not mentioned: https://github.com/elalish/manifold/wiki/Manifold-Library --- while I understand it to have many of the same disadvantages as OpenCASCADE, it does seem worth mentioning.

Interestingly the kernel was previously discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35071317

It seems really interesting/promising, esp. the compleat history and editability (I'd love to see that history listed in a pane which could be opened/closed --- add a series of disclosure triangles which would allow hiding finished elements so that one could focus on the current task and it would be a dream come true for me --- if I can puzzle out the 3D stuff, so far I've crashed and burned on all the apps I've tried (BRL-CAD, FreeCAD, Solvespace, Alibre Atom...) --- the only thing I've been successful w/ is OpenSCAD and similar coding tools).

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