5 ms·

FreeCAD BIM development news

80 points by buovjaga 6y ago

codetrotter 6y ago
Archive link for anyone else having trouble accessing the site: http://web.archive.org/web/20201031133514/https://yorik.uncreated.net/blog/2020-011-freecad-september http://web.archive.org/web/20201031133514/https://yorik.uncr...
tikej 6y ago
I love the revolution that FreeCAD BIM and rest of https://community.osarch.org https://community.osarch.org promises. When I'm going to find an architect, that's going to make a project of my house, I will specifically look for companies that use FOSS software, even though it probably will narrow pool of available contractors by a lot. I mean it is going to be MY HOUSE, something I plan to live in for many years (in my case I like to wait longer, build a house exactly the way I want it, and live for the rest of life in it). I want to buy project and "own" the project in a sense to be able to open it and modify. I also want to be able to simulate the heck out of MY future home before it's build. Using fast computers we have today I can try different sizes, shapes and properties of windows, walls and doors, adjust heating, cooling, plumbing, airflow, home automations and countless other things. I can see how the sun would enter the home (https://floyd.lbl.gov/radiance/ https://floyd.lbl.gov/radiance/) before foundations are laid. Sure, most people don't want to do that and that's okay. Most people also don't want to look at the source of programs they are using. I do and even when I don't, I love to have this possibility open. I understand, that so far Autodesk dominated the architecture software, but since they are moving/moved to subscription-based plans I hope that more and more architects will move away from subscription-based software. For their own good. I wouldn't gamble tools of my trade on something that can be taken away from me any moment and hope they also wouldn't. FreeCAD BIM & company work to make it possible and for that I am very grateful. It would be great if in next decades we would have something like open source catalogue of great solutions in home building.
- dudus 6y ago
  I understand the reasoning but I think any architect not using the absolute best tools available to them at any given time is shooting themselves in the foot. Costs associated with subscriptions are negligible for full time professionals. I think the rise of FreeCad is good for amateurs or part-time architects, and I hope one day it can rival others in the industry, like blender did for modeling, sculpting, composing and FXs. But when it comes to BIM, I'd rather have an architect that uses Autocad than one that uses subpar tools.
  - fsloth 6y ago
    Autocad is not really a good example of a 'pro' tool in the sense that it would necessarily signal quality. Sure it's old and its DWG format is the market leading proprietary black box blob format. It does not have any features though that would make the design for he house to be of better quality than with any other drafting tool. Revit is probably closer to what you meant, but I have no idea how the quality of the drawing tool would affect the quality of the architects output. Construction design tools are all more or less old and crufty. For the love of god, someone please disrupt the industry. The domain is shallow but complex. Open source is probably not the answer - but open tools most certainly won't hurt.
  - person8645 6y ago
    You’re right on but I would like to add in data interoperability. Revit is the standard and the 2700/year is nothing compared to paying 25-50/hour to retrain employees. But Revit doesn’t even open its own files from the past. If you built a building in Revit 2015, you need that exact version to keep using the model for maintenance and repairs. We all have a cascade of versions from our first project to the current year. Further, integrating structural and mechanical engineering into the BIM process is great but all three firms (or more for larger or more complex projects) must be on the same version to share files. Insanity. I now use ArchiCAD which is focused on Open IFC as the interchange format. It’s not perfect but it’s a good step. Once data interchange works then mixing in more specialized tools for certain tasks becomes easier so FreeCAD wouldn’t have to compete with the entire Revit toolset all at once.
    - 6y ago
- person8645 6y ago
  I'm an architect and I have a few thoughts to offer to possibly help your thinking about your future dream home. First up is I would strongly encourage you to keep all the pieces of the project separate in your thinking. In residential construction you're buying a printed drawing set and printed specification manual with architectural stamps on it - for commercial and high end construction, the product can be a BIM model but residential architects won't have experience delivering that product so it will take some research. The contractor is providing physical materials arranged into a house matching the plans and specs from the architect. Just to give you an understanding of the precise basis of the current process, the dominant contract under which owner-architect relationships is governed is the B101 (https://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2017-04/B101_2017%20sample.pdf https://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2017-04/B101_201...) with some more sophisticated relationships described here https://www.aia.org/articles/210481-selecting-the-right-owner-architect-agreeme https://www.aia.org/articles/210481-selecting-the-right-owne... . The legal standard for owner-contractor relationships is the A101 https://help.aiacontracts.org/public/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Preview_A101-2017.pdf https://help.aiacontracts.org/public/wp-content/uploads/2020... The A101 and B101 together implicitly create the architect contractor relationship through drawings and specifications. You can and should take as much control as you want over that process but just have it clear in your mind what the products are. The house you're going to live in will not be better or worse based on the means of creation but rather the product. Some methods will give you a better end result more efficiently, but many paths will lead to a wonderful, high quality home that you is exactly how you want. What you will gain by controlling means of creation is the ability to control the drawings in the future if you want to make changes or repairs. BIM models are now delivered to clients in commercial projects because they offer great power for maintenance and energy use control in the future. Relating to your interest in simulation and generative design: The easiest way to get into generative design right now is Rhino with Grasshopper. If you're primarily interested in energy simulation then adding in the DIVA plugin would help too. Grasshopper's built-in functions can handle the geometry simulation already. Grasshopper support Python as well, if you're fluent. Revit + Dynamo is relevant due to Revit's market dominance. Those are the standards to which FreeCAD's tools will be held, both in ease of use and power of output. Additionally, any unbiased rendering engine can simulate daylight for you. I'm not aware of anyone using FreeCAD, but it's on my radar as something to look into over time. I currently professionally use Archicad, I have used Revit, and I have used Rhino and AutoCAD. Training on new software is very time consuming and switching for a single project would guarantee a loss for the architect if the traditional 10-12% of construction cost is used as the fee. If any of my firms had to use a new software and make money on a single project the cost would be about double. I would suggest you aim at working with someone local to you since there are such wide differences between how things are done in different markets. Also try to get the contractor and architect on board early and together if you want the most control on the outcome. In commercial construction that's "design build" or "integrated project delivery", more or less. It will be hard to achieve that integration in residential construction but money talks and if you offer to pay the architect hourly and pay the contractor hourly for pre-construction services then you have a chance of achieving you dream process, but at a higher cost. I wish more of the industry worked how you envision. I'm hoping to work toward that goal myself. Good luck when it eventually happens for you!
buovjaga 6y ago
This bit was very interesting: "This last month we also had a hectic turnover, because Autodesk changed the terms of the free version of their Fusion360. There is a full load of new limitations that restrain much the use for personal/hobby users. For example, the g-code you export from Fusion360 to CNC machines (that cut objects out of a block of material), is now making the machine running slower (and therefore raising the production costs), for no apparent reason other than nagging the users into buying a subscription. As a result, we saw a massive migration of users to FreeCAD, and it's really thrilling to see people discovering FreeCAD and learning it and liking it." Seems also to be reflected in contributions: https://twitter.com/FreeCADNews/status/1321931951658422284 https://twitter.com/FreeCADNews/status/1321931951658422284 "We'd like to take a moment to congratulate all the new devs that are stepping up lately to submit fixes for the #FreeCAD project. Thx for leaning in! The commit log is becoming quite diverse and exciting to follow"
- rgovostes 6y ago
  This is the first time I've heard of this change to Fusion360, and my initial reaction was to lower my opinion of Autodesk. But on second thought it seems like a good compromise: hobby users still get the functionality for free, but it dissuades use of the free version in commercial manufacturing.
  - Brian_K_White 6y ago
    I see no excuse for artificially sabotaging output. Limited access to features is one thing, artificially injected breakage is another. A person or company that behaves that way is not someone I want to deal with and not a tactic I want to reward with success. I would rather pay even more to have open source developers work on honest problems.
    - nucleardog 6y ago
      How do you segment hobby CNC from commercial CNC usage? Seems like “how quickly they need the job run” is a good compromise. For commercial use time is money, for a hobbyist something taking a bit longer is pretty inconsequential. The alternative you’d suggest is just to cut the hobbyists off. How is that better?
roland35 6y ago
Is freeCAD a viable replacement for Fusion 360 now, especially with the recent changes to the Hobby license?
- guitarbill 6y ago
  Viable in terms of functionality for creating models for e.g. hobbyist 3d printing? Yes, there's a bunch of people using it, and I've managed to use it for this (admittedly very simple models). Is it as nice/easy to use? Not quite. Although Qt is pretty good on some Linux flavours and Windows. With more donations, I'm sure this could improve, too. But on a deeper level, the feature set is large/mind-boggling, and I think this is a problem for adoption for a specific use-case like FDM/FFF/3d printing design, but also in general for software quality and software development. For example, some workbenches work better than others - one even straight up threw a classic Python 3 error, "bytes required, not str". This can be mitigated to a certain extent by disabling workbenches you don't need [0]. But it feels like a jack of all trades, master of none situation. What are the alternatives? I don't know. OpenSCAD basically has no editing GUI and a bizarre language. Fusion 360 still works, even though it's clear Autodesk will continue to squeeze it (not only the non-commercial restrictions, but the significant price in 2018 if i'm remembering correctly). Blender is great, and boolean tools are improving, but it isn't parametric, and the non-destructive workflow is unusual. [0] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Interface_Customization#Workbenches https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Interface_Customization#Workbenc...
  - andybak 6y ago
    > Blender is great, and boolean tools are improving, but it isn't parametric, and the non-destructive workflow is unusual. I recently discovered https://github.com/aachman98/Sorcar https://github.com/aachman98/Sorcar which looks intriguing but there is UI friction with these workflows and node-based systems offer power but add clutter and complexity. I wish a non-destructive modifier stack was front and center in Blender. I know it's in there but it's not the primary focus and that hurts UX.
- DanTheManPR 6y ago
  I am experimenting with it as a replacement for hobby projects that I want to share and collaborate on. I was always leery of Fusion 360 precisely because it was not truly free, and instead encumbered by the whims of Autodesk. If I want to create things that are meant to become part of the creative commons, then my whole creative toolchain should be part of that same commons. There is a learning curve to it, as the interface and a lot of the paradigms are different than what is typical of other design tools. I've had to humble myself and follow through a lot of video tutorials (Joko Engineering is pretty good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h1ofkRFdeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h1ofkRFdeI). I'm then re-modeling some simple projects just to assure myself that I can replicate what I've done before (for example, https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4616582/files https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4616582/files). Some aspects of it seem fairly unfriendly initially, but the experience smooths out once you grok the approach. I'm so used to using Solidworks that I kind of forget what it was like to first learn how to use parametric modelers.
seraffin2020 6y ago
...and if anyone needs a buy-and-own Illustrator/Photoshop replacement for a laughable price - Serif Affinity is the way to go!
mandragon 6y ago
When still in construction engineering long ago, I was a whiz with AutoCAD. The move to BIM via Revit, another Autodesk product, was widely predicted. It was impossible to fathom any widespread exodus from these standards, given the massive corporate backing on an already complex software ecosystem with a deep legacy. It seemed, at the time, unlikely that any competitors, and certainly not open source or free solutions, would ever gain competitive standing in industry versus the entrenched Autodesk solutions. Has this changed?
herewulf 6y ago
> although the SVG format has an excellent support for hatch patterns (anything can become a hatch pattern, even bitmap images), the Qt implementation of the SVG format lacks support for it (it has its own system but it's not very practical to make that compatible with SVG). Therefore at the moment we have no clear idea of how to go further. This makes me sad. I've worked on quite a few commercial engineering projects over the years where one GUI toolkit has been taken up after another and then discarded because of various limitations, particularly the difficulty of solid integration with 3D viewports. Most of the projects have been research projects that only lasted a few years but we've been through wxWidgets, WPF, Qt, JavaFx, now React & friends and none of them have left us saying "hey, let's use that same one next time". I wonder if these types of engineering applications would be much better off going the Blender route and rolling their own GUI, or using a GUI which puts rendering first. I'm reminded of the article about using Godot for GUIs posted on HN early this month[1]. The main complaint seems to be accessibility which seems silly to be discussing for inherently visual applications. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24043427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24043427

80 points by buovjaga 6y ago

Archive link for anyone else having trouble accessing the site: http://web.archive.org/web/20201031133514/https://yorik.uncreated.net/blog/2020-011-freecad-september http://web.archive.org/web/20201031133514/https://yorik.uncr...

tikej 6y ago

I love the revolution that FreeCAD BIM and rest of https://community.osarch.org https://community.osarch.org promises. When I'm going to find an architect, that's going to make a project of my house, I will specifically look for companies that use FOSS software, even though it probably will narrow pool of available contractors by a lot. I mean it is going to be MY HOUSE, something I plan to live in for many years (in my case I like to wait longer, build a house exactly the way I want it, and live for the rest of life in it). I want to buy project and "own" the project in a sense to be able to open it and modify. I also want to be able to simulate the heck out of MY future home before it's build. Using fast computers we have today I can try different sizes, shapes and properties of windows, walls and doors, adjust heating, cooling, plumbing, airflow, home automations and countless other things. I can see how the sun would enter the home (https://floyd.lbl.gov/radiance/ https://floyd.lbl.gov/radiance/) before foundations are laid. Sure, most people don't want to do that and that's okay. Most people also don't want to look at the source of programs they are using. I do and even when I don't, I love to have this possibility open. I understand, that so far Autodesk dominated the architecture software, but since they are moving/moved to subscription-based plans I hope that more and more architects will move away from subscription-based software. For their own good. I wouldn't gamble tools of my trade on something that can be taken away from me any moment and hope they also wouldn't. FreeCAD BIM & company work to make it possible and for that I am very grateful. It would be great if in next decades we would have something like open source catalogue of great solutions in home building.

dudus 6y ago
I understand the reasoning but I think any architect not using the absolute best tools available to them at any given time is shooting themselves in the foot. Costs associated with subscriptions are negligible for full time professionals. I think the rise of FreeCad is good for amateurs or part-time architects, and I hope one day it can rival others in the industry, like blender did for modeling, sculpting, composing and FXs. But when it comes to BIM, I'd rather have an architect that uses Autocad than one that uses subpar tools.
- fsloth 6y ago
  Autocad is not really a good example of a 'pro' tool in the sense that it would necessarily signal quality. Sure it's old and its DWG format is the market leading proprietary black box blob format. It does not have any features though that would make the design for he house to be of better quality than with any other drafting tool. Revit is probably closer to what you meant, but I have no idea how the quality of the drawing tool would affect the quality of the architects output. Construction design tools are all more or less old and crufty. For the love of god, someone please disrupt the industry. The domain is shallow but complex. Open source is probably not the answer - but open tools most certainly won't hurt.
- person8645 6y ago
  You’re right on but I would like to add in data interoperability. Revit is the standard and the 2700/year is nothing compared to paying 25-50/hour to retrain employees. But Revit doesn’t even open its own files from the past. If you built a building in Revit 2015, you need that exact version to keep using the model for maintenance and repairs. We all have a cascade of versions from our first project to the current year. Further, integrating structural and mechanical engineering into the BIM process is great but all three firms (or more for larger or more complex projects) must be on the same version to share files. Insanity. I now use ArchiCAD which is focused on Open IFC as the interchange format. It’s not perfect but it’s a good step. Once data interchange works then mixing in more specialized tools for certain tasks becomes easier so FreeCAD wouldn’t have to compete with the entire Revit toolset all at once.
  - 6y ago
person8645 6y ago
I'm an architect and I have a few thoughts to offer to possibly help your thinking about your future dream home. First up is I would strongly encourage you to keep all the pieces of the project separate in your thinking. In residential construction you're buying a printed drawing set and printed specification manual with architectural stamps on it - for commercial and high end construction, the product can be a BIM model but residential architects won't have experience delivering that product so it will take some research. The contractor is providing physical materials arranged into a house matching the plans and specs from the architect. Just to give you an understanding of the precise basis of the current process, the dominant contract under which owner-architect relationships is governed is the B101 (https://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2017-04/B101_2017%20sample.pdf https://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2017-04/B101_201...) with some more sophisticated relationships described here https://www.aia.org/articles/210481-selecting-the-right-owner-architect-agreeme https://www.aia.org/articles/210481-selecting-the-right-owne... . The legal standard for owner-contractor relationships is the A101 https://help.aiacontracts.org/public/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Preview_A101-2017.pdf https://help.aiacontracts.org/public/wp-content/uploads/2020... The A101 and B101 together implicitly create the architect contractor relationship through drawings and specifications. You can and should take as much control as you want over that process but just have it clear in your mind what the products are. The house you're going to live in will not be better or worse based on the means of creation but rather the product. Some methods will give you a better end result more efficiently, but many paths will lead to a wonderful, high quality home that you is exactly how you want. What you will gain by controlling means of creation is the ability to control the drawings in the future if you want to make changes or repairs. BIM models are now delivered to clients in commercial projects because they offer great power for maintenance and energy use control in the future. Relating to your interest in simulation and generative design: The easiest way to get into generative design right now is Rhino with Grasshopper. If you're primarily interested in energy simulation then adding in the DIVA plugin would help too. Grasshopper's built-in functions can handle the geometry simulation already. Grasshopper support Python as well, if you're fluent. Revit + Dynamo is relevant due to Revit's market dominance. Those are the standards to which FreeCAD's tools will be held, both in ease of use and power of output. Additionally, any unbiased rendering engine can simulate daylight for you. I'm not aware of anyone using FreeCAD, but it's on my radar as something to look into over time. I currently professionally use Archicad, I have used Revit, and I have used Rhino and AutoCAD. Training on new software is very time consuming and switching for a single project would guarantee a loss for the architect if the traditional 10-12% of construction cost is used as the fee. If any of my firms had to use a new software and make money on a single project the cost would be about double. I would suggest you aim at working with someone local to you since there are such wide differences between how things are done in different markets. Also try to get the contractor and architect on board early and together if you want the most control on the outcome. In commercial construction that's "design build" or "integrated project delivery", more or less. It will be hard to achieve that integration in residential construction but money talks and if you offer to pay the architect hourly and pay the contractor hourly for pre-construction services then you have a chance of achieving you dream process, but at a higher cost. I wish more of the industry worked how you envision. I'm hoping to work toward that goal myself. Good luck when it eventually happens for you!

buovjaga 6y ago

This bit was very interesting: "This last month we also had a hectic turnover, because Autodesk changed the terms of the free version of their Fusion360. There is a full load of new limitations that restrain much the use for personal/hobby users. For example, the g-code you export from Fusion360 to CNC machines (that cut objects out of a block of material), is now making the machine running slower (and therefore raising the production costs), for no apparent reason other than nagging the users into buying a subscription. As a result, we saw a massive migration of users to FreeCAD, and it's really thrilling to see people discovering FreeCAD and learning it and liking it." Seems also to be reflected in contributions: https://twitter.com/FreeCADNews/status/1321931951658422284 https://twitter.com/FreeCADNews/status/1321931951658422284 "We'd like to take a moment to congratulate all the new devs that are stepping up lately to submit fixes for the #FreeCAD project. Thx for leaning in! The commit log is becoming quite diverse and exciting to follow"

rgovostes 6y ago
This is the first time I've heard of this change to Fusion360, and my initial reaction was to lower my opinion of Autodesk. But on second thought it seems like a good compromise: hobby users still get the functionality for free, but it dissuades use of the free version in commercial manufacturing.
- Brian_K_White 6y ago
  I see no excuse for artificially sabotaging output. Limited access to features is one thing, artificially injected breakage is another. A person or company that behaves that way is not someone I want to deal with and not a tactic I want to reward with success. I would rather pay even more to have open source developers work on honest problems.
  - nucleardog 6y ago
    How do you segment hobby CNC from commercial CNC usage? Seems like “how quickly they need the job run” is a good compromise. For commercial use time is money, for a hobbyist something taking a bit longer is pretty inconsequential. The alternative you’d suggest is just to cut the hobbyists off. How is that better?

roland35 6y ago

Is freeCAD a viable replacement for Fusion 360 now, especially with the recent changes to the Hobby license?

guitarbill 6y ago
Viable in terms of functionality for creating models for e.g. hobbyist 3d printing? Yes, there's a bunch of people using it, and I've managed to use it for this (admittedly very simple models). Is it as nice/easy to use? Not quite. Although Qt is pretty good on some Linux flavours and Windows. With more donations, I'm sure this could improve, too. But on a deeper level, the feature set is large/mind-boggling, and I think this is a problem for adoption for a specific use-case like FDM/FFF/3d printing design, but also in general for software quality and software development. For example, some workbenches work better than others - one even straight up threw a classic Python 3 error, "bytes required, not str". This can be mitigated to a certain extent by disabling workbenches you don't need [0]. But it feels like a jack of all trades, master of none situation. What are the alternatives? I don't know. OpenSCAD basically has no editing GUI and a bizarre language. Fusion 360 still works, even though it's clear Autodesk will continue to squeeze it (not only the non-commercial restrictions, but the significant price in 2018 if i'm remembering correctly). Blender is great, and boolean tools are improving, but it isn't parametric, and the non-destructive workflow is unusual. [0] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Interface_Customization#Workbenches https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Interface_Customization#Workbenc...
- andybak 6y ago
  > Blender is great, and boolean tools are improving, but it isn't parametric, and the non-destructive workflow is unusual. I recently discovered https://github.com/aachman98/Sorcar https://github.com/aachman98/Sorcar which looks intriguing but there is UI friction with these workflows and node-based systems offer power but add clutter and complexity. I wish a non-destructive modifier stack was front and center in Blender. I know it's in there but it's not the primary focus and that hurts UX.
DanTheManPR 6y ago
I am experimenting with it as a replacement for hobby projects that I want to share and collaborate on. I was always leery of Fusion 360 precisely because it was not truly free, and instead encumbered by the whims of Autodesk. If I want to create things that are meant to become part of the creative commons, then my whole creative toolchain should be part of that same commons. There is a learning curve to it, as the interface and a lot of the paradigms are different than what is typical of other design tools. I've had to humble myself and follow through a lot of video tutorials (Joko Engineering is pretty good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h1ofkRFdeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h1ofkRFdeI). I'm then re-modeling some simple projects just to assure myself that I can replicate what I've done before (for example, https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4616582/files https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4616582/files). Some aspects of it seem fairly unfriendly initially, but the experience smooths out once you grok the approach. I'm so used to using Solidworks that I kind of forget what it was like to first learn how to use parametric modelers.

seraffin2020 6y ago

...and if anyone needs a buy-and-own Illustrator/Photoshop replacement for a laughable price - Serif Affinity is the way to go!

mandragon 6y ago

When still in construction engineering long ago, I was a whiz with AutoCAD. The move to BIM via Revit, another Autodesk product, was widely predicted. It was impossible to fathom any widespread exodus from these standards, given the massive corporate backing on an already complex software ecosystem with a deep legacy. It seemed, at the time, unlikely that any competitors, and certainly not open source or free solutions, would ever gain competitive standing in industry versus the entrenched Autodesk solutions. Has this changed?

herewulf 6y ago

> although the SVG format has an excellent support for hatch patterns (anything can become a hatch pattern, even bitmap images), the Qt implementation of the SVG format lacks support for it (it has its own system but it's not very practical to make that compatible with SVG). Therefore at the moment we have no clear idea of how to go further. This makes me sad. I've worked on quite a few commercial engineering projects over the years where one GUI toolkit has been taken up after another and then discarded because of various limitations, particularly the difficulty of solid integration with 3D viewports. Most of the projects have been research projects that only lasted a few years but we've been through wxWidgets, WPF, Qt, JavaFx, now React & friends and none of them have left us saying "hey, let's use that same one next time". I wonder if these types of engineering applications would be much better off going the Blender route and rolling their own GUI, or using a GUI which puts rendering first. I'm reminded of the article about using Godot for GUIs posted on HN early this month[1]. The main complaint seems to be accessibility which seems silly to be discussing for inherently visual applications. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24043427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24043427