241–250 of 377 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don’t work in the industry, you have zero chance of accurately evaluating whether or not, or how, it will be impacted by any new technology. The fact that it “seems easy” is a great flag that it probably isn’t.
This seems like an unnecessarily unkind response. The post you're replying to is sharing their opinion and asking what people who are in the industry think about it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can and do use all those FOSS tools just fine both as a hobbyist and professionally, my needs are meet. Mine aren't: GIMP is okay , FreeCAD is a complete joke. It is painfully obvious that their development is done primarily by F/LOSS enthusiasts rather than by industry professionals and UX designers. They are closer to being a random collection of features than a professional workhorse. You might eventually get…
I would think that in this audience OpenSCAD would be an option. I only do occasional design for some things to print, and I'm always happy to come back to my OpenSCAD text files that I can actually read and understand within minutes, rather than having to try to remember the correct click path through some giant graphical CAD software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been using freecad extensively. Almost daily. It's an absolute utter mess. It barely works. But it's essentially the only open source CAD. So I keep trucking. The most important improvement is the toponaming heuristic solver spearheaded by Realthunder. Since that was merged into mainline, it seems that the devs keep breaking the UX and shortcuts without rythme nor reason, while the fundamentals are broken beyo…
Another opensource CAD tool to look at is Dune 3D: https://dune3d.org/ which has been discussed here in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958 which if it just had parameters/scripting would have a lot more potential.
It's a shame, because it looks really nice. Maybe I'll check it out for the next thing I do where that's not a requirement. Might be a shame since I've finally learnt how to (basically) use freecad now!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Lightroom isn't losing to Darktable; and FreeCAD isn't even in the rear view mirror of Solidworks. Tbf, everything starts somewhere and all the proprietary apps you listed were not instant market leaders. I can and do use all those FOSS tools just fine both as a ho…
> I can and do use all those FOSS tools just fine both as a hobbyist and professionally, my needs are meet. Mine aren't: GIMP is okay , FreeCAD is a complete joke. It is painfully obvious that their development is done primarily by F/LOSS enthusiasts rather than by industry professionals and UX designers. They are closer to being a random collection of features than a professional workhorse. You might eventually get…
It is definitely not a joke. It enabled me to have a very fulfilling hobby.
[1] Examples: a Steam Deck Skadis Dock, all kind of adapters for easy connection of wood parts, magnetic modular mini shelves for everything in the bathroom, a replacement for a broken door handle, a delicate plissé mounting point that is no longer produced, accessories for the microscopes for school …
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder what will be the next category of open source to pull ahead? KiCad, for PCB design. They have been making massive improvements over the last few years, and with proprietary solutions shutting down (Eagle) or being unaffordable (Altium) Kicad is now by far the best option for both hobbyists and small companies. With the release of KiCad 5 in 2018 it went from being "a pain to use to, but technically suffici…
Glad to see they have a good amount of sponsors: https://www.kicad.org/sponsors/sponsors/
Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete. Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Light…
> I wonder what will be the next category of open source to pull ahead? KiCad, for PCB design. They have been making massive improvements over the last few years, and with proprietary solutions shutting down (Eagle) or being unaffordable (Altium) Kicad is now by far the best option for both hobbyists and small companies. With the release of KiCad 5 in 2018 it went from being "a pain to use to, but technically suffici…
Guess what, user adoption increased dramatically, because it became pleasant (or tolerable) to use by people that used literally any other program.
V8 included in the core many things that were plugins before, and replaced the old utilities that the neckbeards in the forum were crying to keep, or else! (or else more adoption.)
V9 had even more many improvements, but also many regressions, over V8. V10 might be the release that truly consolidates the core of the suite and then they can start really focus on high speed designs.
I've navigated many programs over my career, and unless a future employer mandates me to use Altium, or purely technical reasons (8+ layer, high speed designs) requires me to use Cadence, only kicad for me.
Incidentally, it feels like this past two years freeCAD GIMP and Inkscape have started moving away from listening to noisy members of the community, to useful members of the community. I'm seeing a slow but steady progress that will eventually accelerate and make both toold true alternatives, as it happened with KiCAD (though it will really be tough for GIMP, even if it's perfectly usable for many, many tasks, any graphic designer will kick and scream if they're not given the adobe suite, pity.)
Myself, i do very little basic graphics like replicate buttons and such things to not bother my colleague, or apply correction to my photos, i proudly do that in GIMP and inkscape.
Graphics and animation should no longer move in the direction of perfecting the representation of real world. It is actually necessary for the graphics to scream that they are graphics and not real photos or real video. The distinction should be very obvious. This is the need of the day.
What does Blender do differently that makes it such a successful open source product? It’s powerful and pleasant to use. Even the release marketing page is beautiful and well-made. I like open source as much as the next guy, but outside of developer tools there is little that comes close to Blender in terms of utility and UX. Is it funding? Specific individuals? Are there PMs and designers? Whatever it is, it’s worki…
GIMP vs Krita is a similar story. GIMP never will be the Photoshop replacement they aimed to be
Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete. Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Light…
On aesthetics, it definitely beats out Lightroom Classic, which is a closed-source paid tool (sidenote: I really miss Aperture).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. I can think of a few more: Git obsoleted an entire category of commercial software seemingly almost overnight, VSCode has become by far the most widely used IDE (not entirely open source, though), TeX still dominates mathematical typesetting AFAIK (as it has…
TeX is arguably the only application amongst these, as opposed to tool (and that’s debatable). OSS definitely dominates in tooling, but successful open source end-user applications are rarer.