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SteamCAD – 2D CAD designed to draw steam locomotives

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Re: SteamCAD – 2D CAD designed to draw steam locomotives

#21

Post by avhon1 »

mmastrac wrote: post #8

I love how specific yet comprehensive this package is. The manual appears to be lovingly crafted and from what I can tell, well written [1]. I don't know how many people are specifically looking to draw CAD diagrams of steam locomotives, but I absolutely love that this was someone's itch to scratch and they put so much time into this. [1] https://github.com/oskardolch/SteamCAD/blob/master/SteamCAD....

One related thing that struck me about SteamCAD was this passage from (the last page of) the manual:

"5.1 What Next?

Some people may be interested in what are the future plans with SteamCAD. The answer is there are none. SteamCAD is finished software (the only one in the whole computer world?), there are no plans to extend it. It does everything it was supposed to do, if there are bugs in the software, they are now features of the software.

Well, not quite so. Of course, if the software need some adjustment in the future to work on new operating systems, it will be updated.

[...]

Despite what was written in the section 5.1, we have published a bunch of patches in November 2018. The patch includes several bug fixes, improved precision when snapping to objects and improved handling of paralel curve copies when the distance grows beyond the smallest curve radius."

This seems like a rare example of software that is not abandoned, but is "finished", and will suffer no feature creep. It is a romantic idea, for a piece of software to be conceived for an exact purpose, be programmed until it exactly fulfills that purpose, and then just be... done, a crystal molded to its niche.

Re: SteamCAD – 2D CAD designed to draw steam locomotives

#23

Post by snazz »

zadkey wrote: post #17

Is it too sardonic to think that it's only a matter of time before Autodesk tries to buy this too? For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk#Corporate_acquisition... Additional Reference: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sardonic

Given that it's more a program for producing art in that style (as opposed to engineering new trains), they almost certainly won't? Especially since it's open source.

Re: SteamCAD – 2D CAD designed to draw steam locomotives

#24

Post by snazz »

app4soft wrote: post #10
Rexxar wrote: post #5

Looks interesting but the sample svg image make my Firefox suffers to render it.

> sample svg image make my Firefox suffers to render it Links2 [0] browser render it without any issues.[1] [0] http://links.twibright.com/ [1] https://i.imgur.com/3UXj3bh.png

Is that pseudo-graphical Links output just raw X or something? Is it a wrapper around a terminal emulator? I also find the "unprecedented visual experience" part on the homepage to be humorous.

Re: SteamCAD – 2D CAD designed to draw steam locomotives

#25

Post by nogabebop23 »

avhon1 wrote: post #21
mmastrac wrote: post #8

I love how specific yet comprehensive this package is. The manual appears to be lovingly crafted and from what I can tell, well written [1]. I don't know how many people are specifically looking to draw CAD diagrams of steam locomotives, but I absolutely love that this was someone's itch to scratch and they put so much time into this. [1] https://github.com/oskardolch/SteamCAD/blob/master/SteamCAD....

One related thing that struck me about SteamCAD was this passage from (the last page of) the manual: "5.1 What Next? Some people may be interested in what are the future plans with SteamCAD. The answer is there are none. SteamCAD is finished software (the only one in the whole computer world?), there are no plans to extend it. It does everything it was supposed to do, if there are bugs in the software, they are now f…

I love the ideal, but unfortunately this is only a characteristic of software that is not (widely) used. In a combination of the Peter Principle and the Big Bang, software will be used in an every-expanding array of uses for which it will attempt to add first-party support until it collapses under it's own mass and dies a death of ten thousand vertical slice competitors and the process repeats.

Re: SteamCAD – 2D CAD designed to draw steam locomotives

#26

Post by userbinator »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #25
avhon1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One related thing that struck me about SteamCAD was this passage from (the last page of) the manual: "5.1 What Next? Some people may be interested in what are the future plans with SteamCAD. The answer is there are none. SteamCAD is finished software (the only one in the whole computer world?), there are no plans to extend it. It does everything it was supposed to do, if there are bugs in the software, they are now f…

I love the ideal, but unfortunately this is only a characteristic of software that is not (widely) used. In a combination of the Peter Principle and the Big Bang, software will be used in an every-expanding array of uses for which it will attempt to add first-party support until it collapses under it's own mass and dies a death of ten thousand vertical slice competitors and the process repeats.

Knuth's TeX is somewhat widely used, yet has the similar characteristic of approaching stability.

Re: SteamCAD – 2D CAD designed to draw steam locomotives

#28

Post by chromaton »

avhon1 wrote: post #19
pkaye wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like a general purpose 2D CAD though. I don't see anything specific to trains. Looks Interesting nonetheless.

In some sense, I agree with you -- there is nothing about this package that is necessarily specific to trains. However, this seems more like an art program than a CAD program. All it does is draw and manipulate straight and curved lines. It doesn't keep track of any relationships or properties of the lines, and it doesn't know anything about areas defined by the lines. SteamCAD seems like a poor program for developin…

> All it does is draw and manipulate straight and curved lines. It doesn't keep track of any relationships or properties of the lines, and it doesn't know anything about areas defined by the lines.

All 2D CAD software worked like this for a long time. It's "Computer Aided Drafting": a computerized way to do what used to be done with pencil and paper.

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