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We are talking here about a mature technology. Not a bleeding edge area. Modeling a part, making a drawing of the model, and creating a fabrication strategy an
by aj7 5y ago
We are talking here about a mature technology. Not a bleeding edge area. Modeling a part, making a drawing of the model, and creating a fabrication strategy and code are all problems solved by multiple competing vendors who interact with customers on a daily basis. It’s sufficiently hard to do WELL that open source, or free solutions are mostly for hobbyists.
- jjk166 5y agoThere's a difference between well established and mature. I've been using CAD software for nearly two decades and even now hardly a day goes by when I don't curse solidworks for doing something stupid or making something unnecessarily complicated, and it's one of the more user friendly options out there. I think most engineers would describe CAD as slow and tedious, even if they are experienced users. If you look at things like writing or digital art software, experienced users can utilize those to express the ideas in their heads about as quickly and easily as they could with pen and paper, whereas modeling even simple things takes way longer in CAD than a beer-napkin sketch, and there are plenty of cases where I can imagine a geometry but I have no idea how I would model it in CAD. Beyond making things more intuitive, version control is decades behind that of software, constructing parametric models in a way that they don't break immediately with minor changes requires significant skill on the part of the user, task automation is essentially nonexistent, and collaboration tools are a joke. The field is ripe for disruption by whatever clever team figures out a good way to address these many pain points.