21–30 of 197 posts
Designing 3D parts is hard enough, and while parametric modeling has uses... come on.
I feel CAD is one area where open source does not shine. The problem space is too complex, and the UIs demand continuous, thoughtful development driven from customer demands rather than developers scratching their own itches. Not least there are free (as in beer) solutions available, like fusion 360, that are enormously capable. Theres certainly a place for open source, and openscad would be a great tool to reach for…
- colorise solid faces with random colors
- colorise faces by type (cylinder, plane, etc.)
- add 3D labels in the scene
I feel CAD is one area where open source does not shine. The problem space is too complex, and the UIs demand continuous, thoughtful development driven from customer demands rather than developers scratching their own itches. Not least there are free (as in beer) solutions available, like fusion 360, that are enormously capable. Theres certainly a place for open source, and openscad would be a great tool to reach for…
Because... You can copy the UI of the leader and problem solved.
There you have GIMP with an absolute nightmare UI to use, but people keep saying, just get used to it. On the other hand, a single developer, in javascript, made a copy of photoshop, and most people I know prefer to use that over GIMP...
Just copy the UI that works, if you can't research your own UI.
Personal Context: I am a civil enginer, and our requirement from CAD softwares are a lot simpler than Mechanical Engineering. Here on HN, whenever I see people discussing CAD, its the mechanical version of parts and 3d printing.
Shameless Plug: I have decided to try building my own! Over a long enough timeline, it is doable, including the UI/UX part.
I really want to support open-source CAD, but it's so hard to take FreeCAD seriously. It reminds me of POV-Ray, which was (and still is) a parametric raytracer. An impressive feat of engineering completely derailed by the choice of a "UI" paradigm that made the simplest things unreasonably hard. Designing 3D parts is hard enough, and while parametric modeling has uses... come on.
I would love to go back to FreeCAD, but for now I'm using Onshape (I run Linux, so Fusion isn't an option).
I'm a occasional hobbyist maker and i've used Autodesk Fusion, Solid Edge, OpenSCAD and other niche parametric programs, but always felt FreeCAD was too complex. But I really wanted it to work for me because it's FOSS and 100% offline. So with the new FreeCAD 1.1 RC I found an hour long tutorial and dove in. (1.1 is supposedly much easier to work with) After doing the tut I can say that 1.1 is very nice, i can uninst…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried SolveSpace? It's easily my favorite open source CAD program. The main things it's missing are shells, fillets, and chamfers. But I've been able to 3D print quite a few parts using it!
You might want to check out Dune3D. It advertises itself as combining the constraint solver from SolveSpace with a OpenCASCADE geometry kernel supporting fillets and chamfers. :) Haven't used it much apart from some minor tests (I tend to prefer MoI3D, but that's in a different category in several ways...), but as far as FOSS solid modelers it seems like the most promising to me. I do remember some small UI quirks, b…
The problem with FreeCAD, on the other hand, is that it's a "just two more weeks and it'll be great" solution.
The developers are clearly talented in a raw-math kind of way, but FreeCAD offers the eternal promise of usability in the next release; while never delivering it.
Those who are profoundly cynical might consider the possibility that the legacy CAD industry has infiltrated the FreeCAD development team and run Pied-Piper ops there to prevent a Blender-moment stealing their revenue.
This would perfectly explain why the FreeCAD experience is so consistently bizarre.