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Onshape is a good combination of visual + you can set exact values for things. I’m always happy to try new tools, but I tend to fallback to Blender for artsy st

Onshape is a good combination of visual + you can set exact values for things. I’m always happy to try new tools, but I tend to fallback to Blender for artsy stuff and Onshape for more precise parts. I suck at 3d modeling, so I evaluate tools from a “how much value can a noob get” point of view.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
That is definitely an important user perspective. My angle is that I am a professional robotics engineer as well as an open source evangelist. I design a lot of open source CAD and I’d really like it if the CAD package itself was open source as it is important to me to have a community of users who fork my designs. So far open source CAD does not feel adequate as a design tool for me. FreeCAD is conceptually the closest but it seems like the project needs more investment. I recently tried it again and it seems extremely simple compared to Solidworks or Onshape. Honestly CAD is very complex software and is not well suited to a single engineer working in their hobby time. I think a huge reason Blender has been successful is that they built a sustainable crowd funding system. They currently pull in $166k each month with that system: https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/ I am pleased to see also Godot engine (a similar type of tool) pulling in over $7k/month (last I checked) on Patreon. Anyway there is a “business model” for open source projects even if they don’t sell anything. Call it a funding model. I think open source projects need to get a handle on that for anything that exceeds a very small team. I am trying to build this kind of sustainable funding for my own open source farming robot (link in profile) and I think we’re going to go with Open Collective at least as a front end. https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/ For fiscal hosting we’ve applied to the Open Collective Foundation and the Software Freedom Conservancy. https://sfconservancy.org/ https://sfconservancy.org/ I think open source CAD really needs a funding plan like this. It’s a very large software project and we’ve seen how Blender and Godot are able to actually get traction and produce a compelling program with resources like that.
- irevdev 5y ago
  Some really interesting thoughts in funding, thankyou. The gotdot and blender examples useful.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

That is definitely an important user perspective. My angle is that I am a professional robotics engineer as well as an open source evangelist. I design a lot of open source CAD and I’d really like it if the CAD package itself was open source as it is important to me to have a community of users who fork my designs. So far open source CAD does not feel adequate as a design tool for me. FreeCAD is conceptually the closest but it seems like the project needs more investment. I recently tried it again and it seems extremely simple compared to Solidworks or Onshape. Honestly CAD is very complex software and is not well suited to a single engineer working in their hobby time. I think a huge reason Blender has been successful is that they built a sustainable crowd funding system. They currently pull in $166k each month with that system: https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/ I am pleased to see also Godot engine (a similar type of tool) pulling in over $7k/month (last I checked) on Patreon. Anyway there is a “business model” for open source projects even if they don’t sell anything. Call it a funding model. I think open source projects need to get a handle on that for anything that exceeds a very small team. I am trying to build this kind of sustainable funding for my own open source farming robot (link in profile) and I think we’re going to go with Open Collective at least as a front end. https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/ For fiscal hosting we’ve applied to the Open Collective Foundation and the Software Freedom Conservancy. https://sfconservancy.org/ https://sfconservancy.org/ I think open source CAD really needs a funding plan like this. It’s a very large software project and we’ve seen how Blender and Godot are able to actually get traction and produce a compelling program with resources like that.

irevdev 5y ago
Some really interesting thoughts in funding, thankyou. The gotdot and blender examples useful.