5 ms·

I've always found it a little surprising that companies haven't built/funded a open-source organization for parametric mechanical CAD, similar to Blender for ga

by qchris 6y ago

I've always found it a little surprising that companies haven't built/funded a open-source organization for parametric mechanical CAD, similar to Blender for games or KiCad for electronics/PCB design. The upside for a ROI seems like it would be enormous, and pretty easy to make happen. Industrial seat licensing for products like Solidworks, CATIA, Inventor, and (now) Fusion are enormously expensive. It's not just private organizations either--CAD proficiency is such a basic skill that every serious engineering school has an organizational license for their students too, which I'd imagine also costs a bundle. It's not as if the tools themselves are expanding functionality at some sort of rapid rate, either; I haven't done much CAD in the last two years (so maybe I somehow missed some sort of feature explosion), but while a regular user between 2013-2018, I saw basically no change in the vast majority of my most-used tools for several different CAD programs, with the exception of some improvement in out-of-the-box simulation capability. The existing FOSS alternatives just aren't at par. I've tried FreeCAD, OpenSCAD, etc., and most mechanical engineers/CAD specialists wouldn't touch a code-based editor. They're certainly better than before, but the rough edges exist and some of them appear in areas that need to Just Work (like assembly and drawings). From my understanding of their contribution graphs, private organizations putting even two or three full-time developers working on those projects could push them much, much closer to being a drop-in replacement for a lot work that gets done, and potentially even save those orgs some money in the short-term by reducing the total number of seat licenses they need in to function. Edit: Added mention of KiCad, bc that's kind of important too

avhon1 6y ago
m-labs sponsors SolveSpace development. https://m-labs.hk/software/solvespace/ https://m-labs.hk/software/solvespace/
myself248 6y ago
I think the tipping point for KiCad was when CERN realized how much they were spending on professional EDA licenses, and decided to pour those resources into improving KiCad instead. That's how I understood it, anyway. I suppose some large-ish entity that relies on CAD will need to take the same view. I have less faith in academia there, however -- I suspect many of those sitewide licenses are heavily discounted in order to cultivate the addiction, to profit from it later. That's just speculation, though. This is where we really need good software bounties. I'm sure a whole lot of scorned F360 users would throw a few bucks a month into a Patreon or something to advance the state of FreeCAD. I'm not even directly impacted by this; I have a F360 license through my employer, but I'm offended enough on principle to contribute if there's a place to do so.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > when CERN realized how much they were spending on professional EDA licenses I've worked in national labs, and the bigger concern is how to guarantee the ability to open or update the current files in one or two decades. (It was common to see foot-high printouts that faded over the years and became illegibile, to give an example of the time scale we're talking about.) Hobbyists have a similar problem in that they want to be able to "hibernate" a project and update drawings in 5 years, but without thinking about monthly cloud fees. So free or perpetual licenses also make more sense for that use case. Storing drawing files long-term in a vendor's cloud is undesirable if you really want local files for archival or distribution purposes.
sandfly 6y ago
>> I've always found it a little surprising that companies haven't built/funded a open-source organization for parametric mechanical CAD, similar to Blender for games or KiCad for electronics/PCB design. Unigraphics was owned by McDonnell Douglas and then sold to EDS, which was a subsidiary of General Motors. As far as I know, GM still uses Unigraphics as their primary CAD system.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > I've always found it a little surprising that companies haven't built/funded a open-source Well, Blender didn't start as an Open Source project, and is kind of a one-off in that regard. I can't think of any CAD projects started by commercial consortiums, especially Open Source. Blender was a (small) commercial product by Not a Number (NaN), and when the parent company failed, was announced that it could be liberated with E100,000 donations. Normally (almost always) when a software company fails, the receiver sells the IP to a competitor and there's no thought of going the route of Blender. So you won't see many stories like Blender. https://www.blender.org/foundation/history/ https://www.blender.org/foundation/history/ KiCad was originally a one-man hobby project by somebody at Grenoble University, which is the more typical origin of Open Source CAD software: https://kicad-pcb.org/about/kicad/ https://kicad-pcb.org/about/kicad/
0x4a42 6y ago
> I've always found it a little surprising that companies haven't built/funded a open-source organization for parametric mechanical CAD, similar to Blender for games or KiCad for electronics/PCB design. Salome is supported by EDF (French national energy) and BRL-CAD by the US Army. Both are pretty good.

by qchris 6y ago

avhon1 6y ago

m-labs sponsors SolveSpace development. https://m-labs.hk/software/solvespace/ https://m-labs.hk/software/solvespace/

myself248 6y ago

I think the tipping point for KiCad was when CERN realized how much they were spending on professional EDA licenses, and decided to pour those resources into improving KiCad instead. That's how I understood it, anyway. I suppose some large-ish entity that relies on CAD will need to take the same view. I have less faith in academia there, however -- I suspect many of those sitewide licenses are heavily discounted in order to cultivate the addiction, to profit from it later. That's just speculation, though. This is where we really need good software bounties. I'm sure a whole lot of scorned F360 users would throw a few bucks a month into a Patreon or something to advance the state of FreeCAD. I'm not even directly impacted by this; I have a F360 license through my employer, but I'm offended enough on principle to contribute if there's a place to do so.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> when CERN realized how much they were spending on professional EDA licenses I've worked in national labs, and the bigger concern is how to guarantee the ability to open or update the current files in one or two decades. (It was common to see foot-high printouts that faded over the years and became illegibile, to give an example of the time scale we're talking about.) Hobbyists have a similar problem in that they want to be able to "hibernate" a project and update drawings in 5 years, but without thinking about monthly cloud fees. So free or perpetual licenses also make more sense for that use case. Storing drawing files long-term in a vendor's cloud is undesirable if you really want local files for archival or distribution purposes.

sandfly 6y ago

>> I've always found it a little surprising that companies haven't built/funded a open-source organization for parametric mechanical CAD, similar to Blender for games or KiCad for electronics/PCB design. Unigraphics was owned by McDonnell Douglas and then sold to EDS, which was a subsidiary of General Motors. As far as I know, GM still uses Unigraphics as their primary CAD system.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> I've always found it a little surprising that companies haven't built/funded a open-source Well, Blender didn't start as an Open Source project, and is kind of a one-off in that regard. I can't think of any CAD projects started by commercial consortiums, especially Open Source. Blender was a (small) commercial product by Not a Number (NaN), and when the parent company failed, was announced that it could be liberated with E100,000 donations. Normally (almost always) when a software company fails, the receiver sells the IP to a competitor and there's no thought of going the route of Blender. So you won't see many stories like Blender. https://www.blender.org/foundation/history/ https://www.blender.org/foundation/history/ KiCad was originally a one-man hobby project by somebody at Grenoble University, which is the more typical origin of Open Source CAD software: https://kicad-pcb.org/about/kicad/ https://kicad-pcb.org/about/kicad/

0x4a42 6y ago

> I've always found it a little surprising that companies haven't built/funded a open-source organization for parametric mechanical CAD, similar to Blender for games or KiCad for electronics/PCB design. Salome is supported by EDF (French national energy) and BRL-CAD by the US Army. Both are pretty good.