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BRL-CAD

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Re: BRL-CAD

#11

Post by gh02t »

digdugdirk wrote: post #4

As a Mechanical Engineer, I would absolutely love to see something like this (or Freecad/OpenSCAD/etc) step up to the "Blender level" to functionally compete against Solidworks. Its expensive, its buggy, and it requires a beast of a computer to function in any semi-respectable way. Does anyone have any experience in the software side of the industry to help explain why nothing open source is able to step up in a mean…

CSG and CAD are just really hard to get right from scratch technically, with lots of math and edge cases and a massive number of features and optimizations you need to implement to hit minimum viability. Add to that the UI on top of the underlying geometry engine is inherently complicated and is a considerable software engineering problem in its own right. Plus the big players have so much momentum and offer free/nearly free (in terms of cost) options that are really slick and powerful e.g. Fusion360 or OnShape. Blender and KiCAD are examples of similar semi-niche professional tools that have been successful against similar barriers, but I still am not optimistic. Solvespace is cool though and that's the one I'm praying for, personally.

Re: BRL-CAD

#12

Post by threatripper »

digdugdirk wrote: post #4

As a Mechanical Engineer, I would absolutely love to see something like this (or Freecad/OpenSCAD/etc) step up to the "Blender level" to functionally compete against Solidworks. Its expensive, its buggy, and it requires a beast of a computer to function in any semi-respectable way. Does anyone have any experience in the software side of the industry to help explain why nothing open source is able to step up in a mean…

The CAD geometry kernel is the problem. It needs to handle a ton of different features and gets very complex very quickly. FreeCAD uses OpenCASCADE which is also used by quite a few other programs. This kernel dates back to the 90s and is supported by a company.

See: https://wiki.freecadweb.org/OpenCASCADE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology

Re: BRL-CAD

#13

Post by PostOnce »

gh02t wrote: post #11
digdugdirk wrote: post #4

As a Mechanical Engineer, I would absolutely love to see something like this (or Freecad/OpenSCAD/etc) step up to the "Blender level" to functionally compete against Solidworks. Its expensive, its buggy, and it requires a beast of a computer to function in any semi-respectable way. Does anyone have any experience in the software side of the industry to help explain why nothing open source is able to step up in a mean…

CSG and CAD are just really hard to get right from scratch technically, with lots of math and edge cases and a massive number of features and optimizations you need to implement to hit minimum viability. Add to that the UI on top of the underlying geometry engine is inherently complicated and is a considerable software engineering problem in its own right. Plus the big players have so much momentum and offer free/nea…

Fusion360 keeps getting worse and worse, they revoke features and jack the price every few months. At some point open source becomes the better value, at least there you know features won't be stolen or the price increased without notice

Re: BRL-CAD

#14

Post by gh02t »

PostOnce wrote: post #13
gh02t wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSG and CAD are just really hard to get right from scratch technically, with lots of math and edge cases and a massive number of features and optimizations you need to implement to hit minimum viability. Add to that the UI on top of the underlying geometry engine is inherently complicated and is a considerable software engineering problem in its own right. Plus the big players have so much momentum and offer free/nea…

Fusion360 keeps getting worse and worse, they revoke features and jack the price every few months. At some point open source becomes the better value, at least there you know features won't be stolen or the price increased without notice

Yeah to be fair I never actually liked Fusion 360 personally. I don't find it super intuitive, but it is quite powerful and polished and I know some people who use it professionally and can do magic in it. OnShape really is perfect to my tastes in terms of being super intuitive yet powerful, but the cloud aspect gives me heartburn. Part of me hopes Autodesk locking down what used to be very generous license terms on F360 might spawn more OSS work to replace it. Similar crackdowns on Eagle were what motivated a lot of the improvements to KiCAD in the last several years that really took it over the line to being a tool I think is legitimately competitive.

Re: BRL-CAD

#15

Post by samwillis »

threatripper wrote: post #12
digdugdirk wrote: post #4

As a Mechanical Engineer, I would absolutely love to see something like this (or Freecad/OpenSCAD/etc) step up to the "Blender level" to functionally compete against Solidworks. Its expensive, its buggy, and it requires a beast of a computer to function in any semi-respectable way. Does anyone have any experience in the software side of the industry to help explain why nothing open source is able to step up in a mean…

The CAD geometry kernel is the problem. It needs to handle a ton of different features and gets very complex very quickly. FreeCAD uses OpenCASCADE which is also used by quite a few other programs. This kernel dates back to the 90s and is supported by a company. See: https://wiki.freecadweb.org/OpenCASCADE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology

This completely, OpenCASCADE is just not a good enough foundation to build something as powerful and stable as SolidWorks on, and I'm not convinced it could become one. It would take 10s millions dollars and many years to build a new geometric kernel that would allow an open source CAD package to compete at the same level as the "Pro" packages. That would require a massively collaborative effort in the engineering community lead by a company (or two) with deep pockets and an agenda!

Re: BRL-CAD

#16

Post by buildbot »

PostOnce wrote: post #13
gh02t wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSG and CAD are just really hard to get right from scratch technically, with lots of math and edge cases and a massive number of features and optimizations you need to implement to hit minimum viability. Add to that the UI on top of the underlying geometry engine is inherently complicated and is a considerable software engineering problem in its own right. Plus the big players have so much momentum and offer free/nea…

Fusion360 keeps getting worse and worse, they revoke features and jack the price every few months. At some point open source becomes the better value, at least there you know features won't be stolen or the price increased without notice

Yeah Fusion360 is incredibly slow on my M1Max, and does terribly bugging things like spam launchdarkley 2 MILLION TIMES if you dns block it…

Re: BRL-CAD

#17

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

digdugdirk wrote: post #4

As a Mechanical Engineer, I would absolutely love to see something like this (or Freecad/OpenSCAD/etc) step up to the "Blender level" to functionally compete against Solidworks. Its expensive, its buggy, and it requires a beast of a computer to function in any semi-respectable way. Does anyone have any experience in the software side of the industry to help explain why nothing open source is able to step up in a mean…

There's a double problem: CAD needs really good UI ergonomics, and the underlying computational geometry kernel needs to have stable predictable results. These are both fundamentally really really hard, and a contribution at a time model makes them even more difficult.

Re: BRL-CAD

#18

Post by elcritch »

samwillis wrote: post #15
threatripper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CAD geometry kernel is the problem. It needs to handle a ton of different features and gets very complex very quickly. FreeCAD uses OpenCASCADE which is also used by quite a few other programs. This kernel dates back to the 90s and is supported by a company. See: https://wiki.freecadweb.org/OpenCASCADE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology

This completely, OpenCASCADE is just not a good enough foundation to build something as powerful and stable as SolidWorks on, and I'm not convinced it could become one. It would take 10s millions dollars and many years to build a new geometric kernel that would allow an open source CAD package to compete at the same level as the "Pro" packages. That would require a massively collaborative effort in the engineering co…

I believe an initiative backed by a group of large university, national lab, DOE, etc would also be sufficient. Particularly if it was written in say Julia where non-C++ experts (aka grad students) could participate then it could grab a lot of attention from various research labs. Then you could have a winning formula without a FAANG type company.

Re: BRL-CAD

#19

Post by joshvm »

PostOnce wrote: post #13
gh02t wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSG and CAD are just really hard to get right from scratch technically, with lots of math and edge cases and a massive number of features and optimizations you need to implement to hit minimum viability. Add to that the UI on top of the underlying geometry engine is inherently complicated and is a considerable software engineering problem in its own right. Plus the big players have so much momentum and offer free/nea…

Fusion360 keeps getting worse and worse, they revoke features and jack the price every few months. At some point open source becomes the better value, at least there you know features won't be stolen or the price increased without notice

I gave up on Fusion360 when it told me that the STL exporter wouldn't work without a cloud connection. The app itself works well enough offline, so this seems like a bizarre omission. Surprisingly there are places in the world with 3D printers, but poor to no internet access. In the past Autodesk's servers have also crashed and people have been unable to export models that weren't previously online.

Re: BRL-CAD

#20

Post by marcodiego »

samwillis wrote: post #15
threatripper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CAD geometry kernel is the problem. It needs to handle a ton of different features and gets very complex very quickly. FreeCAD uses OpenCASCADE which is also used by quite a few other programs. This kernel dates back to the 90s and is supported by a company. See: https://wiki.freecadweb.org/OpenCASCADE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology

This completely, OpenCASCADE is just not a good enough foundation to build something as powerful and stable as SolidWorks on, and I'm not convinced it could become one. It would take 10s millions dollars and many years to build a new geometric kernel that would allow an open source CAD package to compete at the same level as the "Pro" packages. That would require a massively collaborative effort in the engineering co…

We heard similar comments about linux and GNU a few decades ago.
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