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Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

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Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#61

Post by WillAdams »

virtualritz wrote: post #60
freeopinion wrote: post #26

Dune3d comes off like a reskin of SolveSpace. SolveSpace is pretty awesome, so that's not a knock, per se. I'll leave it to somebody with more experience to fill in what value Dune3D adds beyond SolveSpace.

Usability? SolveSpace is a PITA in that regard. You also need to re-learn most terms that are common in other CAD software. It's a typical OSS thing. Why care about professional users that have years of learning invested into an ecosystem of professional CAD software (including terminology)? Because these people will get you the most valuable feedback if you can get them to even play with your OSS CAD thingy. AI has…

Is there a good text (or video) which discusses the basics of 3D CAD and all the attendant terminology and concepts?

Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#62

Post by omnimus »

Pay08 wrote: post #39
gmueckl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeCAD: https://freecad.org

I would not suggest anyone use FreeCAD. The UX is the worst I've seen for any software. Finding any functionality is next to impossible.

That's pretty rough criticism considering FreeCAD how great work FreeCAD team has been doing on UX recently.

Also all of the software mentioned above has very little UI/UX and also ambition compared to FreeCAD.

Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#63

Post by WillAdams »

carpenecopinum wrote: post #58
idiotsecant wrote: post #2

Its not often you see 'fillets and chamfers' are tip-line features in the readme for CAD packages. But good on you for building something.

This is honestly the first thing I look for with anything new claiming "CAD". Roughly every other week there is a new "The (programmable) CAD that fixes everything!" post on the front page, just for me to open them up excitedly and noticing that they use a mesh kernel and will thus never be able to provide fillets and chamfers painlessly (for the user). All while they are absolutely essential for a lot of designs, es…

Yeah, it's a tough row to hoe --- I've been handling it quite differently in my own project, taking "Design for Manufacturing" to the ultimate conclusion and requiring that the part be designed by actually applying tooling:

https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

Needs a full-on re-write to make the G-code export (and import) work well, but lately I've been focused on exporting to DXFs w/ colour/layer tagging which was just added as an import feature in the CAD tool my side-gig employer does.

Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#64

Post by regularfry »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #50
Pay08 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not suggest anyone use FreeCAD. The UX is the worst I've seen for any software. Finding any functionality is next to impossible.

I disagree. If you switch to the Part Design workbench, it's basically the exact same workflow as SolidWorks. Draw a sketch, add constraints, extrude / revolve / fillet, etc. Yes they have some unconventional names for certain operations, like "pad" instead of "extrude", and yes there's a confusingly-similarly-named "Part" workbench for doing CSG-style CAD, and yes it takes a bit of practice to get good at it. But it…

I think it's fair. I use FreeCAD a lot, and the word I would use last to describe the UI is "discoverable". Ignoring whether a workflow is possible - whether the functionality exists at all - there's a whole lot of it that you have to Just Know, or equally as often Just Know That It's Not Actually Broken. The very fact that you started your comment with "If you " is precisely part of that.

Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#65

Post by WillAdams »

leoedin wrote: post #56
WillAdams wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the UI far more approachable in Dune 3D than any other 3D CAD program I've tried and as the readme notes, Dune 3D imports STEP files and does fillets/chamfers which SolveSpace does not (in the current version) There was a recent video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1VNpC0nwF4 If someone knows of a general introduction to 3D CAD which focuses on vendor-neutral descriptions of terminology and concepts,…

I've had far more success following along video tutorials than written ones. Most written tutorials (as you've pointed out) miss far too much detail. Watching someone do it and copying along teaches all the menu navigation stuff implicitly. I've successfully learned quite a few EDA and 3D CAD tools that way. It's also effectively the way it's taught in a classroom - the teacher shows you and you copy.

I've been trying that, but I've been having a hard time catching the nuances of terminology and minor differences in UI --- hopefully articles such as this will help to make Dune 3D more popular and more videos will show up.

Another is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsOHTD1RYBY

I wish the person doing:

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/res-16-002-how-to-cad-almost-any...

would revisit that course w/ Dune 3D.

Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#66

Post by omnimus »

wolvoleo wrote: post #55
Pay08 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not suggest anyone use FreeCAD. The UX is the worst I've seen for any software. Finding any functionality is next to impossible.

Yeah I just end up using Fusion 360. But depending on a freebie for hobbyists that could be withdrawn any time it's a bit worrying. I wish there were good visual tools. I don't like browser based and blender is too focused on animation (I'm more into 3D printing) so I haven't found a good FOSS alternative. FreeCAD isn't it anyway.

3dDune is actually pretty capable and simple for basic usecases.

Plasticity for free form hard surface CAD modeling.

If you need parametric CAD then the learning curve jumps significantly and FreeCAD nowdays actually makes sense as with a bit of practice and customization you get to great place.

FreeCAD feels like Blender few years before v2.80 - people outright dismissed it because it had a bit unconventional UX but underneath was already the extremely solid software that now dominates 3D polygon modeling. FreeCAD doesn't have that much of a momentum but i wouldn't be surprised if they became Blender of CAD over time.

Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#67

Post by regularfry »

mft_ wrote: post #44
daotoad wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really, really want that to be true, but my experience trying to adopt it has been really painful. Even selecting things in the UI has sucked. I went in and increased the selection radius or whatever, that helped. But really, should I need to do this as a new user? Getting the constraints to behave is like pulling teeth. It also kind of sucks that you have to have really sparse sketches that only contain one closed…

> Even selecting things in the UI has sucked. I went in and increased the selection radius or whatever, that helped. But really, should I need to do this as a new user? Agree - selection isn’t broken, but it’s definitely sometimes frustrating and as it’s such a common function, absolutely should be as close to perfect as possible. I think it’s partly that the visual indication of what you’re hovering over and would b…

There are situations I can think of where selection does seem broken by design. It's fairly easy to get into a situation in the 3d view where you want to select a vertex but because of the draw order it's very hard to find an orientation of the model that lets you put it "in front". So you spend ages selecting the lines around it, spinning the model, trying again from all sorts of angles. Heaven help you if you're trying to select a bunch of points that have this problem, it's frustrating as hell. The second is in sketches, where the constraint icons aren't selectable when they're grouped but will block the selection of a component underneath them anyway. That's just obnoxious. I think in both cases the UI is working as designed, but it makes for an unusable outcome.

Oh, and if the selection point isn't at the pointer point? That's just a bug, and needs to be fixed. I can't see any defending that.

Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#68

Post by interstice »

Evidlo wrote: post #6

Some other open source 3D CAD tools: Code-based - CadQuery - https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery/ - build123d - https://github.com/gumyr/build123d - OpenSCAD - https://openscad.cloud/openscad/ GUI (browser-based) - Cadmium (abandoned, cool idea) - https://mattferraro.dev/posts/cadmium

This thread has turned into a great resource! build123d has been my favourite conceptually so far (it's just Python) but vcad looks very clean too. I like the abuse of + and - in both of these for booleans.

Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#69

Post by sho_hn »

wolvoleo wrote: post #55
Pay08 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not suggest anyone use FreeCAD. The UX is the worst I've seen for any software. Finding any functionality is next to impossible.

Yeah I just end up using Fusion 360. But depending on a freebie for hobbyists that could be withdrawn any time it's a bit worrying. I wish there were good visual tools. I don't like browser based and blender is too focused on animation (I'm more into 3D printing) so I haven't found a good FOSS alternative. FreeCAD isn't it anyway.

Note it's only a freebie if you are on Windows/Mac, too. If you're on Linux, it works terribly on wine and you have to use the browser version, and then you need a $95/month subscription.

Re: Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application

#70

Post by bityard »

gloosx wrote: post #53
Pay08 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not suggest anyone use FreeCAD. The UX is the worst I've seen for any software. Finding any functionality is next to impossible.

Can't agree, I'm a complete newbie in CAD, and after I opened FreeCAD I didn't know what to do at all. Watched one youtube video covering all the basics and I can design whatever I want with confidence. Besides being free – it's very intuitive and great piece of software in my opinion

Which video did you watch?
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