4 ms·

Compared to what? I can't think of a CAD program I could compare it to, and say this about!

IshKebab 5y ago
It's really bad compared to every commercial parametric CAD program I've used (SOLIDWORKS, Pro/E, NX, Fusion 360). It's pretty bad compared to Solvespace too. One of those FOSS programs like KiCAD where it is full of features but they've done absolutely zero work on UX, which makes using it a frustrating "ok you don't do it the obvious way, let me spend 15 minutes googling how to extrude a square" experience.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> It's pretty bad compared to Solvespace too. That sounds like a partial dig toward Solvespace. Aside from lack of features and the 90's UI look, what don't you like about it? Asking as one of the people trying to make it better.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    I didn't mean to give that impression - I do really like Solvespace! It has a slightly unusual but pretty intuitive UI and the modelling actually works! But it's still clearly in another class to the commercial software I listed. Both in terms of UI polish and features. Though in fairness it's way ahead of them in terms of being light and quick to run. The main issues I ran into were no bevels/fillets/drafts, and the fact that small circles become octagons. Last I looked into it the latter was fixable, it just hasn't been fixed, and the former was too difficult to implement with the surface representation it uses. I got the impression that only the guy who originally wrote it understands the actual CAD stuff, and he doesn't work on it any more so the fundamental CAD operations are probably fixed now.
    - traverseda 5y ago
      The person you're responding to has done some great work on the fundamental CAD stuff, moving some functions to use eigan for significant performance increases. They seem to me like they've got a pretty solid grasp of the underlying CAD kernel. I think it would be great if some other people were able to step up and help modernizing other parts of it, making distribution easier, that kind of stuff. I think phkahler has the skills to revive solvespace, but there needs to be some other core contributors who can help out with the build, UI, on-disk format, and the like.
    - phkahler 5y ago
      >> I got the impression that only the guy who originally wrote it understands the actual CAD stuff, and he doesn't work on it any more so the fundamental CAD operations are probably fixed now. That was true for a few years, but I've got a pretty good handle on it, as does one of the other maintainers who implemented boolean intersection. I added the helix and revolve (vs lathe) groups, and have fixed a lot of bugs in triangulation and NURBS code. >> The main issues I ran into were no bevels/fillets/drafts, and the fact that small circles become octagons. The octagon issue is fixed - they become 16-gons minimum, and the chord tolerance can be lowered to get more edges. If you're exporting NURBS that doesn't really mater because the actual curves are exported in STEP. As for the other features, I had been working on that here: ]https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/453#issuecomment-521376948 https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/453#issuecom... Although my implementation will be strictly for the ends of extrusions and not a general purpose edge modifier tool. I also don't know when it will land. We just keep plugging away at whatever pace we have time for ;-) There have been some new contributors too and some of them even dig in pretty deep.
      - IshKebab 5y ago
        Nice! Keep up the good work.
    - pasabagi 5y ago
      I think the edge solvespace has over the closed-source competition is that it's actually enjoyable to use. Every time I think about sitting down to make something with solidworks, my heart sinks. On the other hand, I actually enjoy using solvespace. Obviously, there are some lacking features, occasional jank, and (much less these days) weird pathological performance edge cases, but it's like all open source software: as it gets more polished, as more features get added, you have less and less reason to fire up the horrible UX closed source programs.
      - phkahler 5y ago
        >> I think the edge solvespace has over the closed-source competition is that it's actually enjoyable to use. That is IMHO exactly why people use it, myself included. It really encourages a sort of "play" with the model which seems to come from heavy use of the constraint solver. You never enter dimensions in a property window somewhere, you enter them right on the sketch which means your focus is almost always right there. The interactivity is very high for a CAD tool.
        pasabagi 5y ago
        For me it's the orthogonality - sometimes I hit some weird thing that's really tricky to do, or surprising, but mostly, solvespace gives you a very elegant set of tools for building shapes. That means that instead of stopping every five minutes to fiddle with all the little switches and toggles on some inane popup window you're in a flow state a lot of the time. It's like geometry, where you build complex forms through a straight edge and compass. For this reason, I think that even if solvespace was completely abandoned tomorrow, it would still be of interest to future programmers making future CAD programs.
- jbay808 5y ago
  Extruding a square is exactly the same as SolidWorks though? You sketch a square on any plane, then extrude it (they call it the "pad" tool instead of "extrude" but otherwise it's identical). I think the only thing FreeCAD users have to know, which SolidWorks users don't, is that there is a "Part Design" workbench where this SolidWorks-style workflow is located. There are also many other workbenches for other things like drafting, architecture, or CSG, and it's not immediately obvious which workbench you want to choose for the SolidWorks-style experience.
  - Sophira 5y ago
    I've only just begun using FreeCAD (and CAD in general, especially parametric CAD), but one of the problems I've seen when sketching on a plane has been the topological naming problem[0]. I don't know how it's changed since 0.19, but basically, making changes to your model after sketching on a plane can cause the sketch to anchor to another plane instead. I was fist introduced to this problem in a video[1] made by Flowwie, who makes some fantastic introductory videos for FreeCAD. I'd strongly suggest watching it, because this isn't something the tutorial on the wiki[2] warns you about. Flowwie goes on to suggest an alternate method of working around this problem which works by using reference measurements (measurements within a sketch that aren't specified, but calculated for use in other sketches). [0] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Topological_naming_problem https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Topological_naming_problem [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVKhejma69U https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVKhejma69U [2] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Creating_a_simple_part_with_PartDesign https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Creating_a_simple_part_with_Part... [edit: I accidentally linked to a video I didn't mean to link to! This one is the one I intended.]
    - jbay808 5y ago
      A fix is in progress -- developer realthunder has submitted a patch last year to solve the topological naming problem, and you can try it in their development branch.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    > they call it the "pad" tool instead of "extrude" but otherwise it's identical They call it something Illogic and non-standard which means you have to Google it but otherwise it's identical! To be honest extruding a square was meant to be an exaggerated example but it sounds like it wasn't such an exaggeration!

It's really bad compared to every commercial parametric CAD program I've used (SOLIDWORKS, Pro/E, NX, Fusion 360). It's pretty bad compared to Solvespace too. One of those FOSS programs like KiCAD where it is full of features but they've done absolutely zero work on UX, which makes using it a frustrating "ok you don't do it the obvious way, let me spend 15 minutes googling how to extrude a square" experience.

phkahler 5y ago
>> It's pretty bad compared to Solvespace too. That sounds like a partial dig toward Solvespace. Aside from lack of features and the 90's UI look, what don't you like about it? Asking as one of the people trying to make it better.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  I didn't mean to give that impression - I do really like Solvespace! It has a slightly unusual but pretty intuitive UI and the modelling actually works! But it's still clearly in another class to the commercial software I listed. Both in terms of UI polish and features. Though in fairness it's way ahead of them in terms of being light and quick to run. The main issues I ran into were no bevels/fillets/drafts, and the fact that small circles become octagons. Last I looked into it the latter was fixable, it just hasn't been fixed, and the former was too difficult to implement with the surface representation it uses. I got the impression that only the guy who originally wrote it understands the actual CAD stuff, and he doesn't work on it any more so the fundamental CAD operations are probably fixed now.
  - traverseda 5y ago
    The person you're responding to has done some great work on the fundamental CAD stuff, moving some functions to use eigan for significant performance increases. They seem to me like they've got a pretty solid grasp of the underlying CAD kernel. I think it would be great if some other people were able to step up and help modernizing other parts of it, making distribution easier, that kind of stuff. I think phkahler has the skills to revive solvespace, but there needs to be some other core contributors who can help out with the build, UI, on-disk format, and the like.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> I got the impression that only the guy who originally wrote it understands the actual CAD stuff, and he doesn't work on it any more so the fundamental CAD operations are probably fixed now. That was true for a few years, but I've got a pretty good handle on it, as does one of the other maintainers who implemented boolean intersection. I added the helix and revolve (vs lathe) groups, and have fixed a lot of bugs in triangulation and NURBS code. >> The main issues I ran into were no bevels/fillets/drafts, and the fact that small circles become octagons. The octagon issue is fixed - they become 16-gons minimum, and the chord tolerance can be lowered to get more edges. If you're exporting NURBS that doesn't really mater because the actual curves are exported in STEP. As for the other features, I had been working on that here: ]https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/453#issuecomment-521376948 https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/453#issuecom... Although my implementation will be strictly for the ends of extrusions and not a general purpose edge modifier tool. I also don't know when it will land. We just keep plugging away at whatever pace we have time for ;-) There have been some new contributors too and some of them even dig in pretty deep.
    - IshKebab 5y ago
      Nice! Keep up the good work.
  - pasabagi 5y ago
    I think the edge solvespace has over the closed-source competition is that it's actually enjoyable to use. Every time I think about sitting down to make something with solidworks, my heart sinks. On the other hand, I actually enjoy using solvespace. Obviously, there are some lacking features, occasional jank, and (much less these days) weird pathological performance edge cases, but it's like all open source software: as it gets more polished, as more features get added, you have less and less reason to fire up the horrible UX closed source programs.
    - phkahler 5y ago
      >> I think the edge solvespace has over the closed-source competition is that it's actually enjoyable to use. That is IMHO exactly why people use it, myself included. It really encourages a sort of "play" with the model which seems to come from heavy use of the constraint solver. You never enter dimensions in a property window somewhere, you enter them right on the sketch which means your focus is almost always right there. The interactivity is very high for a CAD tool.
      - pasabagi 5y ago
        For me it's the orthogonality - sometimes I hit some weird thing that's really tricky to do, or surprising, but mostly, solvespace gives you a very elegant set of tools for building shapes. That means that instead of stopping every five minutes to fiddle with all the little switches and toggles on some inane popup window you're in a flow state a lot of the time. It's like geometry, where you build complex forms through a straight edge and compass. For this reason, I think that even if solvespace was completely abandoned tomorrow, it would still be of interest to future programmers making future CAD programs.
jbay808 5y ago
Extruding a square is exactly the same as SolidWorks though? You sketch a square on any plane, then extrude it (they call it the "pad" tool instead of "extrude" but otherwise it's identical). I think the only thing FreeCAD users have to know, which SolidWorks users don't, is that there is a "Part Design" workbench where this SolidWorks-style workflow is located. There are also many other workbenches for other things like drafting, architecture, or CSG, and it's not immediately obvious which workbench you want to choose for the SolidWorks-style experience.
- Sophira 5y ago
  I've only just begun using FreeCAD (and CAD in general, especially parametric CAD), but one of the problems I've seen when sketching on a plane has been the topological naming problem[0]. I don't know how it's changed since 0.19, but basically, making changes to your model after sketching on a plane can cause the sketch to anchor to another plane instead. I was fist introduced to this problem in a video[1] made by Flowwie, who makes some fantastic introductory videos for FreeCAD. I'd strongly suggest watching it, because this isn't something the tutorial on the wiki[2] warns you about. Flowwie goes on to suggest an alternate method of working around this problem which works by using reference measurements (measurements within a sketch that aren't specified, but calculated for use in other sketches). [0] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Topological_naming_problem https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Topological_naming_problem [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVKhejma69U https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVKhejma69U [2] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Creating_a_simple_part_with_PartDesign https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Creating_a_simple_part_with_Part... [edit: I accidentally linked to a video I didn't mean to link to! This one is the one I intended.]
  - jbay808 5y ago
    A fix is in progress -- developer realthunder has submitted a patch last year to solve the topological naming problem, and you can try it in their development branch.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  > they call it the "pad" tool instead of "extrude" but otherwise it's identical They call it something Illogic and non-standard which means you have to Google it but otherwise it's identical! To be honest extruding a square was meant to be an exaggerated example but it sounds like it wasn't such an exaggeration!