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I recently needed to start pumping out complex diagrams for work, so I spent a few hours learning mermaid, realized it couldn't output to SVG, and then spent an

I recently needed to start pumping out complex diagrams for work, so I spent a few hours learning mermaid, realized it couldn't output to SVG, and then spent another hour learning graphviz. Now I can barf out ugly but functional, version controlled diagrams of arbitrary complexity. While I normally use openSCAD when modelling objects for 3D printing, I recently fired up the web version of SketchUp and knocked out some curtain rod bracket stiffeners in about 15 minutes. Visual point-and-click tools are great for learning, and continue to be useful for simple, ephemeral things that don't need to be better than arbitrary. As soon as you reach a high level of complexity, or need to iterate on and optimize something, having the text based description language seems to become orders of magnitude more productive.

jcun4128 5y ago
I love SketchUp unfortunately it seems to not be maintained. At least the free one lags on a gaming computer. So at some point I have to drop time to learn something like F360. Just sucks when you know something really well and can just model things/no learning curve.
- dagw 5y ago
  SketchUp itself is under active development, however they've stopped offering a free version of the desktop application and only offer a stripped down web version.
  - jcun4128 5y ago
    I see. The only other thing is I primarily use it for 3D printing stuff and since it's a surface vs. parametric sometimes something that looks solid is not. I have started using a checker for edges/faces but it's funny when I don't pay attention to a slicer and there's a chunk missing on the print. Anyway yeah mostly the pain now is 2017 version if you rotate a view it lags. But yeah sounds like need to pay for it.
eternityforest 5y ago
I suspect 3D CAD is one area where GUI will always win. As far as I know big companies and militaries and cities and all the rest use GUI. A small subset of people with an impeccable ability to work with 3d stuff in their mind might be more productive in code... till they have to collaborate with others who can't compute a chain of 3 rotations mentally.
mellavora 5y ago
https://openscad.org/ https://openscad.org/ text-based 3D SCAD which renders while you work. You can define sub-components as a function, thus allowing multiple placements.
pbronez 5y ago
Seems there's a VScode plugin that will export Mermaid diagrams as SVG: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Gruntfuggly.mermaid-export https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Gruntfug...
- sgtnoodle 5y ago
  >Todo: export diagrams from inside Markdown source The problem I encountered is that the vscode preview extension only seemed to work with mermaid embedded inside markdown, but not straight mermaid files. Also, one of my diagrams was complex enough that mermaid was starting to produce useless results, such as overlapping several edges spanning the entire diagram. In the spirit of the original article, I hopped over to graphviz as the more boring, mature option. The language is less elegant, but is also simpler with less syntactic sugar.

jcun4128 5y ago

I love SketchUp unfortunately it seems to not be maintained. At least the free one lags on a gaming computer. So at some point I have to drop time to learn something like F360. Just sucks when you know something really well and can just model things/no learning curve.

dagw 5y ago
SketchUp itself is under active development, however they've stopped offering a free version of the desktop application and only offer a stripped down web version.
- jcun4128 5y ago
  I see. The only other thing is I primarily use it for 3D printing stuff and since it's a surface vs. parametric sometimes something that looks solid is not. I have started using a checker for edges/faces but it's funny when I don't pay attention to a slicer and there's a chunk missing on the print. Anyway yeah mostly the pain now is 2017 version if you rotate a view it lags. But yeah sounds like need to pay for it.

eternityforest 5y ago

I suspect 3D CAD is one area where GUI will always win. As far as I know big companies and militaries and cities and all the rest use GUI. A small subset of people with an impeccable ability to work with 3d stuff in their mind might be more productive in code... till they have to collaborate with others who can't compute a chain of 3 rotations mentally.

mellavora 5y ago

https://openscad.org/ https://openscad.org/ text-based 3D SCAD which renders while you work. You can define sub-components as a function, thus allowing multiple placements.

pbronez 5y ago

Seems there's a VScode plugin that will export Mermaid diagrams as SVG: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Gruntfuggly.mermaid-export https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Gruntfug...

sgtnoodle 5y ago
>Todo: export diagrams from inside Markdown source The problem I encountered is that the vscode preview extension only seemed to work with mermaid embedded inside markdown, but not straight mermaid files. Also, one of my diagrams was complex enough that mermaid was starting to produce useless results, such as overlapping several edges spanning the entire diagram. In the spirit of the original article, I hopped over to graphviz as the more boring, mature option. The language is less elegant, but is also simpler with less syntactic sugar.