4 ms·

Mechanical Engineer here and I design stuff in CAD for a living. OpenSCAD is great for the basic stuff but doesn't really scale well. It's fun to play with and

Mechanical Engineer here and I design stuff in CAD for a living. OpenSCAD is great for the basic stuff but doesn't really scale well. It's fun to play with and to teach people programming and CAD at the same time. If FOSS is really a concern, FreeCAD is probably the better route. However, like others said, Fusion 360 for hobbyist is the way to go. For professionals, just go with Solidworks. IMHO, it works better than anything (though I only also know and have been trained how to use Inventor, Creo, and NX so I do not know how other software like Catia will compare). Solidworks is way more advanced than Fusion 360 when you need to design something a bit more complex. Don't forget, CAD modeling is only half the work. Making good drawings is the other half and Fusion 360 drawing capabilities is pretty crappy as of right now. As for the FOSS debate, it's quite interesting because no one in the industry cares about being locked in. $4000 for a license is nothing compared to "$140/hr" rate that engineers cost a company. As long as the software works and the engineer produces tangible results, closed source software will continue to dominate.

saidajigumi 8y ago
As a non-Mech E, but someone who needed parametric CAD for side-biz[1] projects... the delta between FOSS offerings and paid offerings in this space is immense. I evaluated Fusion 360 a few months back, and even that was a non-starter for my use: I was floored that it doesn't have a feature often called "configurations"[2], vital to my work. Solidworks would be great, but the per-seat starting price was far too high for me right now. I went with Alibre Design on the recommendation of an engineer acquaintance, and that's been my personal parametric CAD sweet spot. I adore OnShape's revisions to classic CAD modeling, but it's still more than I want to pay given[1]. [1] not yet money-making, so still akin to "hobbyist" in needing to keep a constrained budget. I absolutely agree with the parent that the per-seat costs seem high, until you factor the costs of your skilled staff in a real work environment. [2] Imagine you want to model a cap screw, but have just one master model for all of the diameter/length/{fully-threaded, partially threaded} variations. Updates to the model are then sanely propagated to every variant. You don't have to go very far down this path before manually keeping separate models in sync will drive you nuts. That's the problem that configurations in CAD s/w were created to solve.
- tcas 8y ago
  In regards to number 2. You can have variables and parameters in Fusion360 -- I use it all the time for adding a tolerance variable and stuff like wall thickness, length, width etc... Are configurations significantly different?
  - saidajigumi 8y ago
    Yes, let me clarify. Variables and parameters in a model, which are then driven by a data set are what configurations give you. E.g. some CAD suites allow a CSV/spreadsheet to drive the configurable parameters. OnShape allows for a table-per-variable, avoiding the need to manage combinatorial explosion in the rows of your config table. Alibre Design simply adds configurations as named entities within a model file. While not driven by external data, it allows complete integration into the editor environment which has upsides for my work. (I don't work with big configuration tables, so this works great for me.) Some suites also allow configurations to enable/disable parametric features. At the simplest, this lets you add boolean changes to the configuration table, like "has mounting holes?" or "is/isn't a full-thread screw" and so forth.

saidajigumi 8y ago

As a non-Mech E, but someone who needed parametric CAD for side-biz[1] projects... the delta between FOSS offerings and paid offerings in this space is immense. I evaluated Fusion 360 a few months back, and even that was a non-starter for my use: I was floored that it doesn't have a feature often called "configurations"[2], vital to my work. Solidworks would be great, but the per-seat starting price was far too high for me right now. I went with Alibre Design on the recommendation of an engineer acquaintance, and that's been my personal parametric CAD sweet spot. I adore OnShape's revisions to classic CAD modeling, but it's still more than I want to pay given[1]. [1] not yet money-making, so still akin to "hobbyist" in needing to keep a constrained budget. I absolutely agree with the parent that the per-seat costs seem high, until you factor the costs of your skilled staff in a real work environment. [2] Imagine you want to model a cap screw, but have just one master model for all of the diameter/length/{fully-threaded, partially threaded} variations. Updates to the model are then sanely propagated to every variant. You don't have to go very far down this path before manually keeping separate models in sync will drive you nuts. That's the problem that configurations in CAD s/w were created to solve.

tcas 8y ago
In regards to number 2. You can have variables and parameters in Fusion360 -- I use it all the time for adding a tolerance variable and stuff like wall thickness, length, width etc... Are configurations significantly different?
- saidajigumi 8y ago
  Yes, let me clarify. Variables and parameters in a model, which are then driven by a data set are what configurations give you. E.g. some CAD suites allow a CSV/spreadsheet to drive the configurable parameters. OnShape allows for a table-per-variable, avoiding the need to manage combinatorial explosion in the rows of your config table. Alibre Design simply adds configurations as named entities within a model file. While not driven by external data, it allows complete integration into the editor environment which has upsides for my work. (I don't work with big configuration tables, so this works great for me.) Some suites also allow configurations to enable/disable parametric features. At the simplest, this lets you add boolean changes to the configuration table, like "has mounting holes?" or "is/isn't a full-thread screw" and so forth.