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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

#151

Post by prokoudine »

PetitPrince wrote: post #150
jonathankoren wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just that. It’s also ugly and awkward to use. I tried to use it after learning Fusion360, and it’s just lacking. I wasn’t even trying to do anything particularly complicated, and it just kinda sucked. You see the same problems with a lot of “flagship” oss ware. 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, a…

Very recently (well: yesterday and today), I made the same non trivial shape for an electronics project, and I tried Fusion360, OnShape and FreeCad. I basically want to extend the base of an Ikea lantern (Enrum); this require creating an (irregular) octagonal shape, and then creating a slot so that the lantern base can sit on it. I had some distant memories of modeling stuff in Solidworks for a project back in univer…

Much of that has been improved for the next release.

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

#152

Post by nhwangus »

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.

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

#153

Post by starky »

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…

Agreed, as someone with significant experience with SolidWorks, and varying experience in Creo and NX, Onshape is the only "free" CAD software that has equivalent user experience to any of those, just such a shame that Onshape's "Free" option sucks and their paid option is obviously not priced for hobbyists. Fusion360 is workable, but its user experience is pretty terrible compared to any of the commercial packages I've got experience in.

My ask for a free CAD software would really be for someone to go through and take the robustness and speed of Creo and combine it with the user friendliness of Solidworks, even if it were to have a fairly limited feature-set to start.

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

#154

Post by zihotki »

prokoudine wrote: post #82
zihotki wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Ondsel would make a plan for supporters. You folks make a great job there, the UX is way easier and better, I'm very impressed. I'd be happy to support the project but current subscription levels are too high for a hobby shop. I wonder if there is a chance for a pathreon or similar type of support.

Businesses that ask for donations don't have a long and happy life :) What you could do instead is donate to the FreeCAD Project Association. Part of the money goes into the development fund, that is, grants for developers.

Why donations? Supporter plan, without any additional benefits or fictional ones and with a tiny price will do.

As for the FreeCAD Project Association, thanks for the tip, that's already included. I prefer to spread the butter all over the bread I'm eating, if I can say it that way.

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

#155

Post by sornen »

hathawsh wrote: post #111
bilsbie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the problem with openscad a little more? I’m not quite following.

As the complexity of a model increases, so does the complexity of determining correct dimensions and object placement. At some point the work becomes complex enough that I spend most of my modeling time cleaning up equations rather than finishing the model. A solver would theoretically replace many of the equations. As a trivial example, let's say I want a square and a diamond and I want the diamond's corner to touch…

To illustrate what can be done with the BOSL2 library for openscad this can add 3 "diamonds" to the RIGHT, FWD, and TOP direction of a square, with the RIGHT and FWD diamond's corner touching the square on the side and the TOP diamond sitting atop the square:

cuboid([8,8,2]) align([RIGHT, FWD, TOP]) cuboid([5,5,2], spin=45);

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

#156

Post by gaudystead »

xipix wrote: post #13

Getting negative vibes from the name. Cadmium's a nasty substance. I mean, you wouldn't call an augmented reality app ARsenic, would you? Constructive, I hope, criticism.

I suspect naming it after a substance that's poisonous to humans isn't an issue for most average users, and for the users who are even aware what cadmium is, might just improve memory retention when trying to think of the name again further in the future.

Personally, I think it's a catchy name.

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

#157

Post by onthecanposting »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #137
onthecanposting wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The biggest reason this hasn't happened so far is the lack of a truly capable parametric kernel" Does parasolid not fit this requirement? The capabilities I've seen in Plasticity are very impressive. Or do you specifically mean FOSS? The more I use CAD platforms, the more I develop the sense that general-purpose CAD is much less useful than single-purpose applications that provide tailored solutions to narrow proble…

I think this is a great point. When looking at ‘best practices’ for constructing robust parametric models I keep thinking “this is so much like software engineering where the programming language is the CAD system” (as an aside, I’ve tried OpenSCAD but found the rendering UI waaay too slow even with simple stuff to be usable for me). So as a model builder you end up trying to build these higher-level abstractions int…

You are right! CAD users encode a design intent into the software, just like you encode a design intent into an editor. I model a construction outcome with geometry like you might model business rules with functions and objects.

Some of the wisdom from programming would do well to pass onto design software. Like how strong type systems can provide safety by pushing rules to compile time and make some errors unrepresentable. Meanwhile, I can fire up Microstation, draw roads crossing at the same elevation with no intersection (think stops and signals, not geometry) between them. Or a drain culvert could terminate in a big Hello Kitty picture. These things should be impossible. If the task is designing a road, I don't need the ability to draw anything I can possibly imagine. I really need the software to know what a road can and can't do, produce a model that obeys those constraints, and to give me files and documents I can give to an owner and a contractor which convey an accurate understanding of what that model is.

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

#158

Post by ddol »

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…

Similarly, I learnt PTC Pro/ENGINEER (now Creo) in university and have tried to learn SolidWorks, Tinkercad, Onshape and FreeCAD but never found them as usable or powerful as ProE. The constraint system, 2D sketch tool and assemblies were hard to map into these other systems.

I feel it’s similar to having learnt Photoshop (7) and then struggle to use GIMP. I keep looking for tools that aren’t there, expect panels to show certain details and they come up short.

It reinforces for me how valuable usability and interface design is for power user tools. But also, how important training materials are, and how loyal a user will be once they are accustomed to completing a workflow with their tool of choice.

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

#159

Post by avhon1 »

geph2021 wrote: post #73
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 don't know a lot about these tools, but I've used QCAD[1] for home improvement projects, drawing schematics and layout diagrams, and been very happy with it. It seems quite powerful. It's also open source, although not browser based. I'm just wondering why QCAD doesn't seem to get much if any mention on HN when CAD tools and open source comes up. 1 - https://www.qcad.org/

QCAD is not a parametric 3D CAD program. You have to know what your part will look like before you draw it, because all it really does is neatly draw lines and curves.

Contrast with Solvespace (or FreeCAD, or any of the popular commercial parametric 3D CAD programs), which lets you specify relationships (constraints) between elements in 2D and 3D. The shape of your part is the finished result, not the starting point.

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

#160

Post by jonathankoren »

prokoudine wrote: post #132
jonathankoren wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just that. It’s also ugly and awkward to use. I tried to use it after learning Fusion360, and it’s just lacking. I wasn’t even trying to do anything particularly complicated, and it just kinda sucked. You see the same problems with a lot of “flagship” oss ware. 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, a…

> 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

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