5 ms·

I really liked OpenSCAD, because I didn't feel like I had the dexterity or the mindset for regular 3d/cad software, going back to the 90s. Mouse interface for 3

by vba616 4y ago

I really liked OpenSCAD, because I didn't feel like I had the dexterity or the mindset for regular 3d/cad software, going back to the 90s. Mouse interface for 3D design never worked for me. Designing physical things using a programming language seemed ideal. For a while I was certain nothing could be better, certainly not traditional CAD. However, I recently discovered FreeCAD and I have been converted. The paradigm of making a sketch, defining constraints and letting an optimizer figure out specifics is so much more easy and powerful than having to write all the functions myself. Committing to getting over the learning curve was one thing, and just getting a decent quality mouse instead of using my laptop touchpad was also a big enabling factor. I get really frustrated with how buggy and confusing FreeCAD is sometimes, but still, it seems infinitely easier to create "professional looking" parts. Fillets, chamfers, etc, are a lot easier. As I recall, Minkowski sum in theory might be quite useful in OpenSCAD, but in practice it was unreasonably slow. And last I'm aware, OpenSCAD was single threaded so I don't feel like I could benefit that much from upgraded hardware. FreeCAD also can tell me stuff like the volume of my part as well as dimensions I didn't explicitly define. I don't recall OpenSCAD allowing introspection on your objects, which is kind of an obviously useful thing. Plus, FreeCAD does some finite element analysis, which may or may not be reliably informative in my hands, but in principle can give me some advice on the properties of a part before I print it. It appears FreeCAD can integrate with OpenSCAD to some extent, but I haven't tried that.

NoZZz 4y ago
You can use Sketchup as well, it has high usability
timonoko 4y ago
They have done something to speed up Openscad quite remarkably. https://ochafik.com/jekyll/update/2022/02/09/openscad-fast-csg-contibution.html https://ochafik.com/jekyll/update/2022/02/09/openscad-fast-c... Most of the problems with complex objects have magically disappeared.
guitarbill 4y ago
CADQuery has completely replaced OpenSCAD for me. It's the best of both worlds - CAD as code like OpenSCAD, actual parametric CAD kernel like FreeCAD. Their GUI is not good/stable (yet), but the Jupyter notebook integration is great and absolutely killer.
dcminter 4y ago
> I get really frustrated with how buggy and confusing FreeCAD is sometimes... I feel like every time I spend any time with FreeCAD I get stuck within minutes by some kind of "Error 1337 has occurred" style non-explanatory dialog, and then when I search for long enough I find a discussion thread explaining that it's an error from the (parametric) kernel, that there's therefore nothing to be done to improve the message, and you're just somehow supposed to intuit that certain orders of operation are impossible. I've given up. Solvespace seems a lot more approachable and while it's less powerful, the power all seems to be reachable rather than booby trapped. For quick stuff I'm using TinkerCAD, which is a doddle. I will have to give FreeCAD yet another go, I suppose. Maybe there's a threshold where the bugginess starts to be easier to work around...? Edit: I should add that I only use Linux; if I were willing to change platform, the commercial options seem to be a lot better than the open source ones.
- vba616 4y ago
  This thread is old, just want to mention for anyone who runs across it, there is a FreeCAD workbench (like an extension) that is not installed by default I recommend checking out: it's called "Curves" and it is a huge improvement in productivity for me, almost as much as FreeCAD vs OpenSCAD in the first place. One of the most powerful things about it is it lets you make two drawings at right angles and combine them to make a non-planar curve, as well as having a bunch of tools for manipulating results. It may require watching some tutorial videos, but this seems to be how you reverse engineer complex curved shapes like, say, cars or other objects.

by vba616 4y ago

NoZZz 4y ago

You can use Sketchup as well, it has high usability

timonoko 4y ago

They have done something to speed up Openscad quite remarkably. https://ochafik.com/jekyll/update/2022/02/09/openscad-fast-csg-contibution.html https://ochafik.com/jekyll/update/2022/02/09/openscad-fast-c... Most of the problems with complex objects have magically disappeared.

guitarbill 4y ago

CADQuery has completely replaced OpenSCAD for me. It's the best of both worlds - CAD as code like OpenSCAD, actual parametric CAD kernel like FreeCAD. Their GUI is not good/stable (yet), but the Jupyter notebook integration is great and absolutely killer.

dcminter 4y ago

> I get really frustrated with how buggy and confusing FreeCAD is sometimes... I feel like every time I spend any time with FreeCAD I get stuck within minutes by some kind of "Error 1337 has occurred" style non-explanatory dialog, and then when I search for long enough I find a discussion thread explaining that it's an error from the (parametric) kernel, that there's therefore nothing to be done to improve the message, and you're just somehow supposed to intuit that certain orders of operation are impossible. I've given up. Solvespace seems a lot more approachable and while it's less powerful, the power all seems to be reachable rather than booby trapped. For quick stuff I'm using TinkerCAD, which is a doddle. I will have to give FreeCAD yet another go, I suppose. Maybe there's a threshold where the bugginess starts to be easier to work around...? Edit: I should add that I only use Linux; if I were willing to change platform, the commercial options seem to be a lot better than the open source ones.

vba616 4y ago
This thread is old, just want to mention for anyone who runs across it, there is a FreeCAD workbench (like an extension) that is not installed by default I recommend checking out: it's called "Curves" and it is a huge improvement in productivity for me, almost as much as FreeCAD vs OpenSCAD in the first place. One of the most powerful things about it is it lets you make two drawings at right angles and combine them to make a non-planar curve, as well as having a bunch of tools for manipulating results. It may require watching some tutorial videos, but this seems to be how you reverse engineer complex curved shapes like, say, cars or other objects.