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Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

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Re: Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

#101

Post by IshKebab »

daemonologist wrote: post #51
downrightmike wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any circuit designers? looking to hobby, but what I saw was all proprietary

You mean like PCBs? KiCad is pretty popular.

KiCAD has pretty awful UX though. I've tried all of the FOSS PCB design apps except LibrePCB (on my to-do list) and Horizon EDA is definitely the one I'd recommend (even though it also has a fair amount of UX oddities it's much better than KiCAD).

DesignSpark PCB is also decent - only minor UX mistakes like warping the mouse when you zoom.

Re: Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

#102

Post by rbbydotdev »

ginko wrote: post #97
aprilnya wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, I’m confused about this comment… the concept of a web app that gets saved into browser cache and then can be loaded and used while offline definitely isn’t new. See Photopea etc

With a stand-alone application once you download it in your file system you know exactly where it is and how to create backups etc. A "browser cache" is just an opaque bit of storage. What if you need to update/reinstall your browser or want to switch? I wouldn't trust important data to it. I generally feel uncomfortable how so many applications are browser-only these days. The thought of having important data in a t…

That used to be the case, but there’s a new API worth checking out, you can read and write files right on your computer https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...

Re: Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

#103

Post by contingencies »

IshKebab wrote: post #101
daemonologist wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like PCBs? KiCad is pretty popular.

KiCAD has pretty awful UX though. I've tried all of the FOSS PCB design apps except LibrePCB (on my to-do list) and Horizon EDA is definitely the one I'd recommend (even though it also has a fair amount of UX oddities it's much better than KiCAD). DesignSpark PCB is also decent - only minor UX mistakes like warping the mouse when you zoom.

KiCAD has pretty awful UX though

It's not perfect but it's pretty damn good these days. By EE standards it's positively awesome. Single platform vendor toolchain hell is why people leave commercial software and move to KiCad, which runs everywhere, is open source, and has a plugin architecture plus mostly every feature you could ever need except high end simulation (which just needs time).

Re: Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

#104

Post by retSava »

A fun thing you can do with this excellent sw is to slice a 3d object into slices to cut with a laser cutter. Ie you'll get a bunch of layers of eg cardboard or plywood, which you can assemble into a large object. Increase layer height to thicker than your material to create gaps in between. This operation is the basis for some very nice looking creative stuff you can find on etsy or even high-end wood working stuff.

Re: Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

#106

Post by wolvoleo »

cyrusradfar wrote: post #2

Surprised this hasn't been shared here before. Built by my former colleague, Stewart Allen (Co-Founder/CTO of WebMethods, CTO of AddThis, Co-Founder/CPO of IonQ, et al.). What caught my attention: - 100% free, no subscriptions, no accounts, no cloud - Local-first: all slicing and toolpath generation runs on your machine - Works in any browser, even offline once loaded - Supports FDM/SLA, CNC milling, laser cutting, w…

Can it be locally installed in docker or something? It's kinda a bummer when I need to do something and there's a connection problem or the server is down.

Edit: looks like yes! https://github.com/GridSpace/grid-apps I will try it then.

In fact I had that only a month or 2 ago with fusion 360. Something in their cloud was down so I couldn't export to STL and i really needed that urgently.

Re: Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

#107

Post by WillAdams »

cyrusradfar wrote: post #2

Surprised this hasn't been shared here before. Built by my former colleague, Stewart Allen (Co-Founder/CTO of WebMethods, CTO of AddThis, Co-Founder/CPO of IonQ, et al.). What caught my attention: - 100% free, no subscriptions, no accounts, no cloud - Local-first: all slicing and toolpath generation runs on your machine - Works in any browser, even offline once loaded - Supports FDM/SLA, CNC milling, laser cutting, w…

(ob. discl., I work for a company which sells software in this space)

I wrote up a bit on Carbide Create at:

- https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/2d-drawing (note that there is a link to a free (as in beer) download for Windows or Mac OS at that link)

- https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/toolpaths

Other commercial programs which one licenses and installs and which don't intrude beyond that include:

- MeshCAM https://www.grzsoftware.com/

- Alibre https://www.alibre.com/ (note that there is a CAM option which is a re-badged MeshCAM)

- Moment of Inspiration 3D https://moi3d.com/ (this is probably the next commercial package I try)

and of course FreeCAD has a CAM Workbench which has seen great strides and Solvespace has a basic facility for G-code generation and some folks just program G-code/CAM directly --- I've been working on a tool for that myself: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

Re: Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

#108

Post by s0a »

jacquesm wrote: post #73
s0a wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this does not track with my experience, so possibly it's the nature of your app or the way it's coded. frameworks like react are notoriously crap. stick to pure html5/css/js and it can be extremely fast and light.

You could have clicked on my profile to find the app that you're criticizing unfairly. It does not use react, but it uses pure html5,css,js, it is extremely fast and light. And yet, there are things that it can not do simply because it runs in the browser, which is a poor operating system for a hard real time program to run under.

I did not criticize your app. I offered that your blanket statement that "The browser is an extremely poor medium to deliver applications" does not comport with my experience. And it looks like I nailed it, too. It is the nature of your application. Had you said "the browser does not offer a real time API which I need for my application", there would have been nothing to say. This is obviously true. Even native desktop apps provide an inadequate environment for "hard RT". So I suspect that is also not a true requirement, either.

Re: Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

#109

Post by Liftyee »

jacquesm wrote: post #41
auggierose wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You answered the question yourself: There is already a standard that allows anyone to create software that works cross-platform: the browser.

The browser is an extremely poor medium to deliver applications. It works, but barely , is a huge resource hog, fragile and it breaks way too often due to a lack of backwards compatibility between browser versions of the same manufacturer. I have a small app that I support and it's been fun to get it to work in the browser (instant cross platform support was indeed the driver) but the experience is still sub-par comp…

Unfortunately, I think all these things are externalities - or at least, areas that don't impact revenue enough to get companies to change.

I too wish that software would be efficient, robust and long-lasting. But it seems that most people don't care about this enough (compared to other factors) to force change. (Alternatively, they are locked in to platforms they don't like to use.)

Re: Grid: Free, local-first, browser-based 3D printing/CNC/laser slicer

#110

Post by fwip »

soanvig wrote: post #78
h4kunamata wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Works in any browser, even offline once loaded That, my friend, is not how offline works. You will be required to have internet access in one way or another. Offline works 100% locally no matter if you have internet or not.

But you have to get the software somehow? Once you get it, it works offline. The same here I guess: once you download the source code/binaries into browser's cache (that can store things indefinitely) it's offline.

True, but you are at the whims of the browser cache, and how long it wants to keep it around.
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