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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

#131

Post by prokoudine »

logrot wrote: post #99
prokoudine wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been rooting for FreeCAD but I think it's just going to be consumed by Ondsel in the next few years. Extremely unlikely. Also, no such plans :)

I appreciate the sentiment. But we both know that plans change. Especially in the software world and even more so in the startup business. Also, "no plans" doesn't really mean much. "I guarantee" is a lot more meaningful.

Well, I could go on and on about this, but consuming FreeCAD is not just unrealistic, it's undesirable.

The best a startup company can do is work in quick iterations: throw things at the proverbial wall to see what sticks, then scale up development accordingly. "Consuming FreeCAD" is the opposite of that. It's how you paint yourself into a corner and die a horrible death.

A much healthier approach is to build a great working relationship with the community: lead the way in a few areas where you have great expertise and encourage development in other areas. It has worked nicely so far.

So no, sorry, I don't see Ondsel consuming FreeCAD over the next few years (or ever). But we can agree to get back to this conversation in, oh, 5 years time would be enough?

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

#132

Post by prokoudine »

jonathankoren wrote: post #125
bobby_the_whal wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeCAD suffers from the same issues that much open-source software suffers from: it has bugs. Bugs erode user confidence. Apparently, there are now > 500 bugs open. When commercial software has bugs, you don't even know they exist often. Sure, but there are also ways to make bug free software, but hardly any open-source software exists that uses those development techniques.

It’s not just that. It’s also ugly and awkward to use. I tried to use it after learning Fusion360, and it’s just lacking. I wasn’t even trying to do anything particularly complicated, and it just kinda sucked. You see the same problems with a lot of “flagship” oss ware. Gimp seems to have the same awkward feature set for 25 years. Apparently the only thing that has changed is they no longer compile against Gtk 1.0, a…

> Gimp seems to have the same awkward feature set for 25 years. Apparently the only thing that has changed is they no longer compile against Gtk 1.0, and they decided to have all images in a single window.

Off the top of my head:

- Full color management

- Non-destructive filters

- 32-bit per channel precision

- Late binding CMYK support

- Unified transform tool

- Vastly better selection and cropping tools

- Vastly better text tool

Should I go on? :)

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

#134

Post by sornen »

hathawsh wrote: post #86

I really hope CADmium can wean me off of OpenSCAD. With OpenSCAD, I don't really have to think at first; I use a simple language to write modules that build on other modules. The problem with OpenSCAD is there's no solver: I have variables, but no constraints. As I make changes, suddenly I have to think hard and solve the constraints manually and it's easy to introduce errors. However, the problem isn't severe enough…

Another option is the BOSL2 library for openscad which has align, attach and anchor operations and many other useful operations and parts.

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

#135

Post by tverbeure »

ajmurmann wrote: post #128
tverbeure wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Alibre is that it only works on Windows. I switched from FreeCAD to the free (as in beer) version of Onshape, which works in the browser and is a night and day difference over FreeCAD. Your designs are wide open for anyone to see, but I can live with that for hobby stuff.

I wouldn't mind having my models public, but that it SaaS is such a nuisance and the reason I am sticking to FreeCAD. I want to be able to edit offline, like on an airplane and not lose the ability to edit my stuff if some company shuts their servers down.

I probably spent 100 hours trying to tame FreeCAD, and ended up thinking CAD was just not for me. I then tried Onshape and found out that the problem was elsewhere.

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

#136

Post by phkahler »

jonathankoren wrote: post #125
bobby_the_whal wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeCAD suffers from the same issues that much open-source software suffers from: it has bugs. Bugs erode user confidence. Apparently, there are now > 500 bugs open. When commercial software has bugs, you don't even know they exist often. Sure, but there are also ways to make bug free software, but hardly any open-source software exists that uses those development techniques.

It’s not just that. It’s also ugly and awkward to use. I tried to use it after learning Fusion360, and it’s just lacking. I wasn’t even trying to do anything particularly complicated, and it just kinda sucked. You see the same problems with a lot of “flagship” oss ware. Gimp seems to have the same awkward feature set for 25 years. Apparently the only thing that has changed is they no longer compile against Gtk 1.0, a…

>> You see the same problems with a lot of “flagship” oss ware. Gimp seems to have the same awkward feature set for 25 years.

I think Kritta is the new flagship OSS image editing software. I don't use either, but that's my impression.

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

#137

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

onthecanposting wrote: post #114
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…

"The biggest reason this hasn't happened so far is the lack of a truly capable parametric kernel" Does parasolid not fit this requirement? The capabilities I've seen in Plasticity are very impressive. Or do you specifically mean FOSS? The more I use CAD platforms, the more I develop the sense that general-purpose CAD is much less useful than single-purpose applications that provide tailored solutions to narrow proble…

I think this is a great point. When looking at ‘best practices’ for constructing robust parametric models I keep thinking “this is so much like software engineering where the programming language is the CAD system” (as an aside, I’ve tried OpenSCAD but found the rendering UI waaay too slow even with simple stuff to be usable for me).

So as a model builder you end up trying to build these higher-level abstractions into your model, where the parameters are your top-level interface.

I think CAD is so much like programming in those ways, although I could just be biased since I’m a software engineer.

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

#138

Post by TaylorAlexander »

This looks great! I hosted some discussion about open source cad late last year on this GitHub discussion board. People tend to say that building a new CAD kernel would take ten full time engineers ten years. I like where truck is going and I’m curious to see what its current limitations are. Sadly I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to evaluate the various options. (The other promising option for a complete package is Ondsel).

See that discussion forum here:

https://github.com/tlalexander/open-cad-foundation/discussio...

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

#139

Post by aiksiongkoh »

hathawsh wrote: post #86

I really hope CADmium can wean me off of OpenSCAD. With OpenSCAD, I don't really have to think at first; I use a simple language to write modules that build on other modules. The problem with OpenSCAD is there's no solver: I have variables, but no constraints. As I make changes, suddenly I have to think hard and solve the constraints manually and it's easy to introduce errors. However, the problem isn't severe enough…

Ondsel has developed an LGPL 3D assembly solver at https://github.com/Ondsel-Development/OndselSolver It is being used in FreeCAD and Ondsel ES.

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

#140

Post by phkahler »

geph2021 wrote: post #73
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…

I don't know a lot about these tools, but I've used QCAD[1] for home improvement projects, drawing schematics and layout diagrams, and been very happy with it. It seems quite powerful. It's also open source, although not browser based. I'm just wondering why QCAD doesn't seem to get much if any mention on HN when CAD tools and open source comes up. 1 - https://www.qcad.org/

Qcad is commercial software. The author is doing his best to ride the line between commercial and OSS, but most free software developers don't want to play. LibreCad was forked from an earlier version of Qcad and fell behind. Now they're doing a whole new LibreCAD but it's been years in the making.
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