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Blender 5.0

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Re: Blender 5.0

#371

Post by VerifiedReports »

sinker wrote: post #370
VerifiedReports wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply. I like FC a lot and use it frequently! And yes, I pretty much use Part Design exclusively... except when I'm importing a shape from an SVG. Then I have to use a combination of workbenches. The combo of tracing a bitmap (from a scanned drawing) with Inkscape and then saving the result as SVG to bring into FreeCAD has been a frequent workflow for me. It generally works very well. To clarify about…

I can't tell for sure without knowing exactly what's happening, but one reason is that if you create a sketch from the Sketcher workbench, it will not be added to the active body. If you create the sketch from the Part Design workbench, then it will be added to the active body. A Body is specifically a Part Design concept, and FC doesn't presume you'll be working in PD, so this makes sense in a way - it works on the…

Thanks, that's useful info and something I've wondered about.

Your comment also serves as an excellent illustration of what's "wrong" with FreeCAD, though.

"One thing to note is that creating sketches from Sketcher and PD is different. Sketcher offers attachment options to faces, edges, etc., while PD only offers to attach the sketch to base plane (XY, XZ, or YZ)."

OK, but I would argue that sketching functionality should still be centralized. So if you have a body or some appropriate object selected and invoke the sketcher (or vice versa), attachment to faces, edges, etc. will be enabled. Otherwise it's disabled.

That's standard GUI, and it's well-understood that greying something out tells the user that some condition isn't met. But he still learns that the option exists and where it resides.

"In FC, I use VarSets for this. I used to use the Spreadsheet workbench, but found it clumsy."

Thanks for the tip. I've been meaning to tackle spreadsheets as a means to resize stuff (another pain point with seemingly many "solutions" in FreeCAD).

Re: Blender 5.0

#372

Post by exasperaited »

shirro wrote: post #53
gehsty wrote: post #26

I’d really like to see something like blender come for the 3D CAD industry, at the moment it feels like the only people who would lose out are AutoDesk. The amount of money that flows in and out of 3D cad (as subscription and then value created) having a first class open source kernel and tooling, would be giving big industrial players freedom to modify and tailor to their needs as well as smaller / hobbyists get sta…

Probably requires something that is almost there then a sponsor(s) to throw in developers or funding to get the rest of the way. On the EDA side CERN did a lot to lift Kicad to the point of being a credible alternative that could breakthrough like Blender. Both those projects are over 30 years old and for a lot of that time were dismissed as too difficult to use or lacking in features. FreeCAD is only 23 years old. I…

IMO the primary limiting factor in FreeCAD at this point is OpenCascade, the CAD kernel, and that is owned by a large org: CapGemini, which has 350,000 employees.

OCC is the domain where FreeCAD's biggest limitations (fillets, chamfers, draft, thickness) are found, and the design of its API is part of why the topological naming problem was so difficult to mitigate.

You need more than a couple of good devs to solve this, or CapGemini would have. CAD kernels are one of the hardest possible things to write in a way that is bug-free, which is why there are so few of them.

I think it is possible that OpenCascade will get more attention because of EDF (french multinational power company) and the French atomic energy commission's involvement in SALOME. Things do seem to be slightly improving.

Re: Blender 5.0

#373

Post by exasperaited »

fsloth wrote: post #303
gehsty wrote: post #26

I’d really like to see something like blender come for the 3D CAD industry, at the moment it feels like the only people who would lose out are AutoDesk. The amount of money that flows in and out of 3D cad (as subscription and then value created) having a first class open source kernel and tooling, would be giving big industrial players freedom to modify and tailor to their needs as well as smaller / hobbyists get sta…

"first class open source kernel" Speaking with over a decade of experience as a developer in industrial CAD (but still just one random guys point of view only). The question _isn't_ about the availability of a 3D kernel. 3D kernel is not the "moat". You can cross that with money. You can purchase a ACIS or Parasolid and you are off to the races. Or even use OpenCascade if you know what you are doing. The more interes…

Yes. This better explains on the one hand Plasticity (Parasolid-based CAD largely for graphic designers, games designers, filmmakers) and on the other SALOME (OpenCascade-based CAD for numerical simulation/FEM/multi-physics etc., being developed for/by energy-related organisations.)

Re: Blender 5.0

#374

Post by exasperaited »

gehsty wrote: post #345
fsloth wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"first class open source kernel" Speaking with over a decade of experience as a developer in industrial CAD (but still just one random guys point of view only). The question _isn't_ about the availability of a 3D kernel. 3D kernel is not the "moat". You can cross that with money. You can purchase a ACIS or Parasolid and you are off to the races. Or even use OpenCascade if you know what you are doing. The more interes…

I guess what I mean is that if the likes of huge defence contractors / automotive industry etc put weight into developing a open kernel and tooling at a volume similar to that of paying for licenses to Autodesk, then they could build their own hyper focussed CAD solution, and the rest of us could be "off to the races" without the upfront cost ACIS or Parasolid.

A huge contractor in the defence and automotive industries does control an open kernel and CAD tooling: OpenCascade is owned by CapGemini. And they do build focussed CAD solutions in it (e.g. SALOME and other tools.)

Several open source CAD packages use it(FreeCAD, Cadseer, Dune3D, SALOME Shaper, KiCAD, CadQuery/Build123D, DeclaraCAD etc.)

There are firms using it for bespoke naval and aerospace applications.

The reality is CAD kernels are incredibly difficult, multi-decade projects, and part of the issue is a lot of the domain expertise in them is literally dying off or retiring.

Re: Blender 5.0

#375

Post by fsloth »

exasperaited wrote: post #374
gehsty wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what I mean is that if the likes of huge defence contractors / automotive industry etc put weight into developing a open kernel and tooling at a volume similar to that of paying for licenses to Autodesk, then they could build their own hyper focussed CAD solution, and the rest of us could be "off to the races" without the upfront cost ACIS or Parasolid.

A huge contractor in the defence and automotive industries does control an open kernel and CAD tooling: OpenCascade is owned by CapGemini. And they do build focussed CAD solutions in it (e.g. SALOME and other tools.) Several open source CAD packages use it(FreeCAD, Cadseer, Dune3D, SALOME Shaper, KiCAD, CadQuery/Build123D, DeclaraCAD etc.) There are firms using it for bespoke naval and aerospace applications. The rea…

” The reality is CAD kernels are incredibly difficult, multi-decade projects, and part of the issue is a lot of the domain expertise in them is literally dying off or retiring.”

Well, they are complex but not impossible. I understand for example zoo.dev just wrote their own.

I also understand tinkercad and womp wrote their own geometry solvers.

Not sure how to compare the above with OpenCascade (since, like you said, it’s pretty complex & public and the others are not public) but at least one can accurately say ”you can absolutely write a 3d modeler from scratch”.

Re: Blender 5.0

#376

Post by italovignoli »

oblio wrote: post #229
alex1138 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment I've heard is that Office (or was that Word?) doesn't necessarily beat LO, some people are just forced to use it because of file formats

Office as a whole wipes the floor with LibreOffice. Cleaner interface, generally more stable, especially on Windows, Excel is and remains a powerhouse, etc. Word and PowerPoint are also very solid. Outlook is meh. If anything, OnlyOffice is incredibly polished. I don't know how they did it but it seems to work better and have a much cleaner UI than LibreOffice even though it's much newer.

OnlyOffice is proprietary software, or freeware if you prefer (they modify the AGPL licence with clauses which are not compliant with the OSD), and by natively supporting the proprietary Microsoft Office document format locks in their users to Microsoft (the company controlling the closed and proprietary format). True free software advocates should avoid it.

Re: Blender 5.0

#377

Post by xsmasher »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #114
ehnto wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does take a different set of skills to regular CAD, but I haven't found it that bad for simple 3D printed models that need to be dimensionally accurate. I have used it to make quite a few functional prints, with the help of making sure my scene units are correct and a CAD plugin.

I haven't tried any of the cad plugins for blender, but I'm not sure how you would retroactively change dimensions in blender. It's usually simple enough to create features to a certain size, but if you need to change them later it becomes significantly difficult. If I put some holes in something that are 1mm from the edge, but then I print it and see it doesn't line up and needs to be 1.5mm, in Fusion I can just cha…

Select the verts, drag them in the right direction. A little pane pops up saying you moved them by .78 mm. Change it to .5mm and you're done.

If you're using boolean operations to make the holes just move the hole-cutter. Same method.

Blender is not a perfect tool for creating 3d prints but it is a capable tool.

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