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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

#161

Post by ryukoposting »

nhwangus wrote: post #152
ryukoposting wrote: post #104

Good to see someone is making this. Losing free student access to Autodesk Inventor exposed me to the hideous world of free-as-in-money 3D CAD software, and my interest in 3D CAD fizzled pretty quickly as a result. On a related note, we really, really need a worthy replacement for EAGLE. It's only a couple years away from EOL, and KiCAD is light years away from being feature-equivalent.

Which specific features are keeping you on Eagle? Most of my more "serious" work is still in Altium, but I've been really pleased with a lot of the QoL features KiCAD has been picking up on as of the later releases (bulk sheet symbol entry placement) and feature coverage is good enough that I'm happy doing mixed signal boards with a few high speed interfaces.

Live synchronization of layout and schematic files. I consider this essential to circuit design, especially in later iterative stages. That alone totally eliminates KiCAD as a professional EDA in my opinion.

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

#162

Post by avhon1 »

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.

SolveSpace is how I teach people CAD at my local makerspace. It's the only program I know of that can be properly onboarded in an hour or so, figured out from there, is useful on its own, and that makes for a good stepping stone to Inventor/SolidWorks/OnShape/etc.

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

#163

Post by numpad0 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #60
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…

Maybe I'm not enough of an evangelist, but I just want a good, non-subscription local-first CAD package. I've recently moved over to Alibre Atom3D, which, while not open-source, costs $200. Once. Then (as long as your host OS doesn't change too much) you can access your designs forever. It runs on the ACIS kernel. "Browser first" and (from the readme) "Beyond that, I will try to monetize by offering a hosted version…

Even $2k per year in 3D CAD is entry level pricing. Good CAD for $200 once is probably a prank tier idea to suitspeople, even though it's a necessity for 3D printing community.

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

#164

Post by ajmurmann »

tverbeure wrote: post #135
ajmurmann wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you do any tutorials? I've done like 10 hrs of the MangojellySolutions beginner tutorials on YouTube and after that I've been pretty much able to do what I want or only had to look up solutions to a very specific problem.

I one time had an issue where I messed up and had to post on the FreeCAD forum and got two of the best responses I've gotten anywhere on the internet ever. Two people opened up my model and took screenshots highlighting where my issue was and gave me several suggestions on how to improve my model in other ways. The initial time investment was substantial and there are still a few workflows that could be smoother for me (attaching a sketch to a different face after it's been created), but that's fairly minor.

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

#165

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

numpad0 wrote: post #163
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not enough of an evangelist, but I just want a good, non-subscription local-first CAD package. I've recently moved over to Alibre Atom3D, which, while not open-source, costs $200. Once. Then (as long as your host OS doesn't change too much) you can access your designs forever. It runs on the ACIS kernel. "Browser first" and (from the readme) "Beyond that, I will try to monetize by offering a hosted version…

Even $2k per year in 3D CAD is entry level pricing. Good CAD for $200 once is probably a prank tier idea to suitspeople, even though it's a necessity for 3D printing community.

I think RS Electronics still maintains and gives away a version of DesignSpark for Windows, which is likely a smart move if it integrates with their catalogue.

Alibre Atom3D is the entry level package, but the whole thing seems very much like the Affinity suite model. It looks very good.

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

#166

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #164
tverbeure wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you do any tutorials? I've done like 10 hrs of the MangojellySolutions beginner tutorials on YouTube and after that I've been pretty much able to do what I want or only had to look up solutions to a very specific problem. I one time had an issue where I messed up and had to post on the FreeCAD forum and got two of the best responses I've gotten anywhere on the internet ever. Two people opened up my model and took…

This. And I think it now has the best tutorials on youtube. And the Facebook group is weirdly fantastic. It’s such a nice community.

But there’s no denying that FreeCAD is still a bit of a lifestyle choice :-) I love it, but I don’t try to sell everyone on it yet.

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

#167

Post by ajmurmann »

ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #166
ajmurmann wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you do any tutorials? I've done like 10 hrs of the MangojellySolutions beginner tutorials on YouTube and after that I've been pretty much able to do what I want or only had to look up solutions to a very specific problem. I one time had an issue where I messed up and had to post on the FreeCAD forum and got two of the best responses I've gotten anywhere on the internet ever. Two people opened up my model and took…

This. And I think it now has the best tutorials on youtube. And the Facebook group is weirdly fantastic. It’s such a nice community. But there’s no denying that FreeCAD is still a bit of a lifestyle choice :-) I love it, but I don’t try to sell everyone on it yet.

I definitely agree on it not being intuitive. Something where I likely will spend hundreds of hours of work and learning is something I want to be unambiguously available to suddenly being taken away from me or be behind a paywall of thousands of dollars. You are 100% correct though that this tradeoff isn't for most people.

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

#168

Post by bauta-steen »

spookie wrote: post #67
RobotToaster wrote: post #59

> In contrast, the open source CAD landscape looks like this: He missed BRL-CAD, which also does brep. The interface is clunky but the kernel seems advanced.

BRL-CAD is a true gem

And interestingly "the oldest known public version-controlled codebase in the world that's still under active development" dating back to 1979.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRL-CAD#toc-History

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

#169

Post by bee_rider »

jonathankoren wrote: post #160
prokoudine wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 be…

You’ve proven my point. A bunch of data loading crap, but nothing substantial on the usability. This is a simple tutorial task. Is it this easy in Gimp? No. It’s not. But hey, we have the same crappy ScriptFu plugins from a quarter century ago. Anyway, you have the source! Shut up and be grateful you insensitive clod! https://youtu.be/K25F9RPrP9Q

The last 3 seem like usability upgrades. Substantial, I dunno.

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

#170

Post by pompino »

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 think this makes sense for a certain market segment. In the commercial arena, cost of AutoCAD (and similar) is negligible compared to the revenue it generates.
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