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µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

microcad.xyz

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Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#71

Post by mft_ »

exasperaited wrote: post #66
arcanemachiner wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my understanding as well.

It's incorrect, then! Lots changed since 2020 in the current 1.0.2 release, including TNP mitigations and the core assembly workbench. The 1.1 developer release (which is stable and useful and getting quite close to final release) contains further TNP mitigations; further improvements to the core assembly workbench; radically better lighting; datums have moved into the core; there's a way of enabling the advanced att…

I agree with this. Per my comment just above, I've been one of the HNers recommending against FreeCAD for years, because that was my experience.

I've recently started to change that opinion; using the build I linked above, it's now pretty usable and competitive/usable for a hobbyist. I'm now considering it my first-line CAD package (until proven otherwise!)

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#72

Post by mft_ »

krisoft wrote: post #13
raddan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would personally prefer to work with a language-based CAD than a strictly graphical one. Especially for parametric kinds of objects. Now that 3D printing is going mainstream, I am certain that new and interesting things are still to come in CAD.

Curious. How much experience do you have with any form of CAD? Is the preference based on that you tried graphical CAD software and you found them lacking, or is it based on imagining how they might work? Last week at the hackspace someone asked me to quickly design a manifold which holds together a scuba mouth piece, a 48mm diameter valve and a nato 40mm screw fitting. They wanted to minimise the internal tidal volu…

Agree with this. I've tried the various programmatic CAD options before, and creating initial shapes is relatively easy, but figuring out how to refer to parts of those subsequent shapes - to e.g. modify further, or build from, or connect to other shapes, is really complex and clunky.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#73

Post by alanbernstein »

krisoft wrote: post #13
raddan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would personally prefer to work with a language-based CAD than a strictly graphical one. Especially for parametric kinds of objects. Now that 3D printing is going mainstream, I am certain that new and interesting things are still to come in CAD.

Curious. How much experience do you have with any form of CAD? Is the preference based on that you tried graphical CAD software and you found them lacking, or is it based on imagining how they might work? Last week at the hackspace someone asked me to quickly design a manifold which holds together a scuba mouth piece, a 48mm diameter valve and a nato 40mm screw fitting. They wanted to minimise the internal tidal volu…

I have a lot of experience with openscad. I design a lot of small, simple-to-moderate parts. I want to use something like fusion instead, but the GUI learning curve is a huge blocker for me.

I'm not a CAD professional, I can't seem to find the time to watch hours of video to get the basics down. With code based CAD, the way to start is usually obvious. When I run into a blocker, I search online, find examples, and try them out. Then, crucially, I copy and paste code snippets into my design, and modify them, to solve my problem.

In a GUI cad tool, I find that I spend most of my time hunting for buttons in the UI, often finding UI layout discrepancies between my version and whatever video I found.

In code, I do have to repeatedly solve little trig or geometry problems, and I'm always aware that a constraint based GUI tool would eliminate that completely. But I always know that I can just spend five minutes with pencil and paper and get it done, whereas switching to fusion means adding an hour or more of work to multiple designs.

I really want to design more effectively, with better fillet flexibility. But for my simple tasks, the barrier to becoming productive in a GUI is just too high.

I believe the "command palette" in e.g. VS code solves this well, perhaps a GUI cad with that would be workable for me.

Maybe what would really help me, is a larger more complex project which I can develop over a longer time in fusion while I learn to use it. Too bad I don't have anything that naturally fits that bill.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#74

Post by juliangmp »

awinter-py wrote: post #11

Tried openscad and then cadquery for some geometry iteration projects and found them clunky. It wasn't just that I was missing a UI; the functions, constraints and geometry kernel weren't as powerful as onshape, which I've used a bit, and presumably light years behind fusion 360, which I haven't used. Even freecad, a UI-based oss cad, is not quite ergonomic for a beginner-to-intermediate user, though it has come a lo…

If you want a classical GUI based cad tool for 3D modelling, I'd suggest taking a look at solve space and dune3d

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#75

Post by fainpul »

alanbernstein wrote: post #73
krisoft wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious. How much experience do you have with any form of CAD? Is the preference based on that you tried graphical CAD software and you found them lacking, or is it based on imagining how they might work? Last week at the hackspace someone asked me to quickly design a manifold which holds together a scuba mouth piece, a 48mm diameter valve and a nato 40mm screw fitting. They wanted to minimise the internal tidal volu…

I have a lot of experience with openscad. I design a lot of small, simple-to-moderate parts. I want to use something like fusion instead, but the GUI learning curve is a huge blocker for me. I'm not a CAD professional, I can't seem to find the time to watch hours of video to get the basics down. With code based CAD, the way to start is usually obvious. When I run into a blocker, I search online, find examples, and tr…

To me it sounds like it would be worth it for you to learn the basics of Fusion or FreeCAD. You would probably quickly recover the hours spent on learning with increased productivity.

I recommend going through some basic tutorial (written or in video form) to build a simple part. The tutorial should teach view navigation, drawing and constraining a sketch, extruding or rotating it to create a 3D body, modifiying that with chamfers / fillets, creating sketches on top of that to add or cut away parts, add holes, create patterns from features. I don't think you need to learn surface modeling at this point. After that you should be good to go on your own projects. You will still need to look up how to do something (as you do now), but that will improve quickly.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#76

Post by coryrc »

alanbernstein wrote: post #73
krisoft wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious. How much experience do you have with any form of CAD? Is the preference based on that you tried graphical CAD software and you found them lacking, or is it based on imagining how they might work? Last week at the hackspace someone asked me to quickly design a manifold which holds together a scuba mouth piece, a 48mm diameter valve and a nato 40mm screw fitting. They wanted to minimise the internal tidal volu…

I have a lot of experience with openscad. I design a lot of small, simple-to-moderate parts. I want to use something like fusion instead, but the GUI learning curve is a huge blocker for me. I'm not a CAD professional, I can't seem to find the time to watch hours of video to get the basics down. With code based CAD, the way to start is usually obvious. When I run into a blocker, I search online, find examples, and tr…

> In code, I do have to repeatedly solve little trig or geometry problems,

BOSL2!

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#77

Post by _flux »

elsjaako wrote: post #67
_flux wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, at least build123d (which I had never heard of, thanks!) can export STEP, which I believe is becoming a necessity if one wants to assemble real-world models with FreeCAD (and nicely also slicers are picking up support to it). I'm on the edge though if I'd really like a proper DSL instead of building it on top of Python, although I can see that too has its benefits (e.g. library access). Does anyone have idea abou…

If you're talking about CAD in general I can see your point. For FreeCAD specifically, there looks to be an OpenSCAD import process directly. I don't have experience with how it works, but that may be better than going through STL

I know the process is there, but I really, really doubt it does anything else than just uses OpenSCAD code to render the mesh, as FreeCAD can also deal with meshes. I think it would be pretty unlikely that the FreeCAD devs would have implemented such a rendering system based on OpenSCAD.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#78

Post by spacedcowboy »

don-bright wrote: post #16
aclindsa wrote: post #10

One of the best things about openscad is the ability to immediately see the results of a code change in the 3D view (all I do is save the file with :w in neovim and openscad re-renders it). Being able to interact like this makes it much quicker and easier to iterate on a design. I read through the ucad website and book for 10 minutes and haven't been able to figure out if there is an analogue to this for ucad? There…

That immediacy is mostly thanks to OpenCSG which is essentially a magic trick to quickly fake 3d rendering of booleans between 3d objects using stencil buffer of gpu. http://opencsg.org/ In other words it renders the cylinders cubes spheres etc and their unions differences etc, to a 2d screen without actually calculating the intersection of those meshes / solids in 3d space. This is the special thing about OpenSCAD d…

> This is the special thing about OpenSCAD design is they figured out how to build an abstract syntax tree that could either be sent to OpenCSG, CGAL (old engine), Manifold (new engine), or even the bare bones 'ThrownTogether' renderer (ancient engine on machines with no gpu that just draws 'negatives' as green blobs iirc).

Mostly.

I've still had several instances when drawing curved solids that the OpenCSG renderer worked well with (visually) but when it came to render-time, there was something wrong. It is very hard to debug things, or at least I found it so, when it goes wrong like that.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#79

Post by [deleted] »

ruicraveiro wrote: post #57
GaryBluto wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although am I the only one to notice the swastika in their logo? Possibly. Although I know it's the wrong way round to be a Nazi swastika, it's made all the more odd by the fact that this is a German project.

Maybe it could be Bauhaus inspired instead. (This isn't a serious suggestion, but if you're biasing your opinion based on their German origin, why not from the good stuff instead?)

[deleted]

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#80

Post by fainpul »

GaryBluto wrote: post #35
hekkle wrote: post #32

Looks like a promising alternative to OpenSCAD. Although am I the only one to notice the swastika in their logo?

> Although am I the only one to notice the swastika in their logo? Possibly. Although I know it's the wrong way round to be a Nazi swastika, it's made all the more odd by the fact that this is a German project.

It's probably just AI generated.
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