8 ms·

On CAD

125 points by app4soft 4y ago

brookst 4y ago
OnShape is amazing. Solidworks paradigm, not surprising because the founders are ex-solidworks. Just beautifully done web app, works great on iPad and everything. And a really nice community-driven plugin capability. From hex infill for 3D printing to mesh deformation, there’s probably a plug-in. And the assemblies and modeling are very nice. For top-down parametric design I don’t think you can do better. I’ve got no connection to onshape other than having used it for years, for probably hundreds of models. Love it.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I passed this over just yesterday and went with a fusion 360 demo but you’ve convinced me to give it a shot. I’ve been having issues with my cheap-ish peristaltic pumps and realized I’d either need to spend way too much or build/3d print something myself in order to resolve the issues. The cloud aspect of fusion seriously kills my enthusiasm for it.
  - elcritch 4y ago
    Note that OnShape is pure cloud (web app) if I understand it correctly -- so perhaps it provides the best parts of a web native app too. The Fusion 360 move to cloud appear to be purely aimed at justifying forcing a subscription model for Fusion stuff. Though the monthly price for hobbyist isn't half bad.
    - nraynaud 4y ago
      Don’t believe the hype, onshape is like a Cad software on Citrix. It’s not spreading the cost of computing a complex fillet over hundreds of machines (or even better, running the same operation in the browser and the cloud and letting the fastest one win). They spin one EC2 for you. So you really don’t get any benefit from the cloud.
      - BWStearns 4y ago
        I don’t need a beefy windows machine in addition to my MBP for my CAD work so there’s the cross platform/consistent performance benefit.
        iancmceachern 4y ago
        A lot of people have pretty good success running solidworks in wind on a mac.
      - navane 4y ago
        the cloud benefit is in the version control, branching, merging, multiplayer, never having to send files, always working in the same version as everyone else. It's in everything communication, not in quickly calculating a fillet. I also got very sad when I learned it was bought by PTC.
  - 015a 4y ago
    I'd also recommend giving Shapr3D a try. Its an extremely nice up-and-coming CAD suite. Very little cloud integration as well (they only very recently added model syncing to your account). Their lineage is definitely as an iPad app, but its been ported with perfect fidelity to MacOS and Windows, and I think that touch-first small-screen lineage has forced them to produce a tool that's so quick and productive to just pick up and get to modeling. Its also built on Siemens Parasolid, same as SolidWorks and OnShape. [1] https://www.shapr3d.com/ https://www.shapr3d.com/
    - steve_adams_86 4y ago
      Bizarre, does this mean Shapr has parametrics now? I tried it last year and it didn’t offer that, so I’ve ignored it since. I loved the UI and actually liked the iPad experience too. Maybe it’s time to give it another chance! Thanks for the tip. I have to say, my biggest hesitation about these kinds of software is knowing anything I create is inevitably trapped behind a subscription. $50/month to maintain access to my designs is really steep! I suppose I can output static models, but to use parametric features, I’ll always need to be subscribed.
- joshu 4y ago
  I did the Model Mania 2001 part 1 challenge in a little under 18 minutes. The part 2 challenge involved only changing the 45 deg to 55 and the height of the center of the bore, so less than a minute. I know Fusion 360 but it's amazing how fast Onshape can be.
- martinhath 4y ago
  OnShape is pretty nice, but their language, FeatureScript, is a disaster.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Miserlou57 4y ago
I spent the last year working closely with someone who spent their entire career entrenched in one of the big boy CAD software companies in one of those very technical roles you do when you avoid management your entire life. He had a lot of great stories. Anyway, while I don’t really have an opinion on the matter, I feel like sharing his opinion here despite not totally understanding the reasoning behind it. It seemed his opinion was that Onshape had great potential to disrupt the industry, but he explained in much funnier terms a tidal wave of celebration and relief washed over his company and the rest of the industry when PTC bought Onshape out. He seemed to think nobody could take a great product and run it into the ground like PTC could, as if they were up there with legendary failures like Microsoft buying Nokia, Yahoo/Tumblr, AOL Time Warner, etc.
- auxym 4y ago
  I am a mechanical engineer and CAD user (never worked for a CAD software company). I second this feeling. OnShape was founded by the original creators of SolidWorks before it was bought by Dassault. It showed great promise in being efficient, powerful, user friendly, built in PLM (SCM for CAD basically) and surprisingly low cost. Compare hundreds a year for a fully loaded OnShape seat subscription to about 20k/yr/seat we paid for CATIA and some bells and whistles (PLM, FEA, etc). The day OnShape was bought was PTC/Siemens is quite comparable to me, to the HN feeling when Adobe recently announced the purchase of Figma.
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    Exactly, it's like when eagle was bought by autodesk. Also to add to this, solidworks can be had for ~4k for a perpetual license and ~1300 a year after that for maintenance. So it sits right between onshape and stuff like catia cost wise.
- varikin 4y ago
  My first job out college was at PTC first in tech support for Windchill and then as a dev for Windchill. Windchill is PTC's PLM/VCS for CAD files. I never really touched CAD. I launched PROe a handful of times, but mainly to test some integration into Windchill. Over the course of 3 years there, I saw maybe 6 or so companies bought by PTC and nothing ever really done with them. Probably the most successful was FlexPLM which for some reason was built on Windchill to offer PLM type software for the apparel industry. It only survived because PTC ignored it. PTC is a company full of too much bureaucracy and managers all trying to push features over completeness.
eps 4y ago
What's "filleting"?
- thrwawy74 4y ago
  I believe this command found in AutoCAD: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2021/ENU/AutoCAD-Core/files/GUID-64F8B700-23B3-4BD6-8C03-66121AA13E8F-htm.html https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore...
- exmadscientist 4y ago
  Rounding the corners of things. Imagine a perfect cube. The edges will be very, very sharp, and this is bad for any number of obvious reasons. To fillet the edges is to round them off: now the cube is much easier to handle. These are "outside" fillets, and you could perhaps make them with a router bit. There are also "inside" fillets (say you "drilled" a perfectly cylindrical hole partway into the cube; an inside fillet would be along the circular bottom edge of the hole), which can't be made after the fact (to do so would involve adding material). The geometry only gets more complex from there: most things aren't cubes or cylinders! Fillets are at once extremely simple, extremely complicated, and extremely important. They are siblings to chamfers, which are the same idea but instead of being round just involve breaking the edge. You could chamfer the edge on that hypothetical cube with a single touch from a sander or (big) file. Fillets require more care.
- bvrmn 4y ago
  To add to explanation: inner fillets relax material stress in the corners and make final produced thing more durable and strong. You pretty much can't use CAD without fillets for real industrial applications.
- dcminter 4y ago
  Sibling comments address your question, but it occurred to me that this anecdote (which you may well already know) from Andy Hertzfeld illustrates why fillets are a vital feature: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_...
- 4y ago
nyanpasu64 4y ago
From my brief research, OnShape is browser-based software-as-a-service which you can rent but never own, which never fails to sadden me.
- nraynaud 4y ago
  The renting part is the same for fusion360
- alkonaut 4y ago
  While it’s sad to depend on a web service that could be gone tomorrow, it’s not like we really “own” software installed locally either. License agreements contain the phrase “the software is licensed, not bought” for a reason. For example the software I sell in my day job has an expiration date of a year, there is no perpetual license. It literally won’t start after a year. The difference between that and a web service is pretty slim.
  - mrelectric 4y ago
    It's not. Ask anyone working on MMO server emulators. Once the server is gone, that's it. With thin browser client you might as well create a new CAD software from scratch. Having actual software on pc means you can at least attempt to crack it.
- elteto 4y ago
  Unfortunately, there are no (major) CAD programs you can own outside of FOSS.
  - lh7777 4y ago
    Solidworks is still available to buy as a perpetual license -- pricing starts at $4200 for Standard. It costs $1500/yr for "maintenance", but that's optional if you don't need updates.
szemy2 4y ago
I really like Shapr3D -- the entire onboarding and then modelling process feels like a new generation of tools.
- alpaca128 4y ago
  The restrictions on their free tier are so ambiguous I have no idea whether it would work for me or not.
- mihaaly 4y ago
  Not really new as it is built on top of Parasolid. The nice UI is fairly new, dictated by the tablet environment and style given while building upon traditional CAD approaches. Their claim of 'reinventing CAD' is very difficult to take seriously when they basically leverage on a 40 years old traditional and highly optimized product where the success point is only that it was made available on tablets when Parasolid compiled their kernel on the then newest Apple hardware (which was powerful enough now to run Parasolid). More like being in the right place in the right time kind of thing, not revolution, exposing the essential functionality of a huge set, while graciously forgetting that CAD is not only about accurate solid modeling (a huge part of it though) but coordination, engineering and workflow matters, without those it is a first unrealised step towards a product, not a reinvention at all, not even close. Nicely simplified handling though, kudos there, exposing well the subset of Parasolid functions being enough. Very good in its niche, in the domain of simple pretty things where forgetting hard matters is acceptable, democratising part (geometry) of the design for more people. The advances in making additive manufacturing available to the masses could elevate it further, true to its roots, by riding the right horses. (assuming it could connect to other tools in a similarly simplified manner that could do the remaing jobs for it in realizing a product)
IshKebab 4y ago
SolveSpace is much better than FreeCAD. Honestly it's the only free CAD worth bothering with. The biggest limitation is no fillets or bevels, but it sounds like FreeCAD can't do that either. But honestly if you're doing a decent amount of CAD as a hobbyist the only sensible option is to pirate Solidworks.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > doing a decent amount of CAD as a hobbyist the only sensible option is to pirate Solidworks I’m a hobyist and I pay for a Fusion 360 licence. Tell me how that is not “sensible”. I pay for my tools, I pay for my materials, why would I not pay for software which makes my life easier and more pleasant?
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    It's not sensible because it's £500 per year! To put it in perspective, MATLAB is a similar "if you have to ask" industrial piece of software and their hobby license is like £125 one-off. (Not including any toolkits but still.) Most hobbyists are not going to blow £500/year on CAD software.
    - iancmceachern 4y ago
      Solidworks for makers is only $99 a year, way less than fusion.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      Most hobbyists might not but there are plenty of us who do. It "saves" me more than that when working on projects.
- ur-whale 4y ago
  > SolveSpace is much better than FreeCAD. True in many regards, e.g. the UI is way better and the constraint solver is more intuitive. But very incorrect in others, specifically: - SolveSpace has, IIRC, no fillets - SolveSpace does not have a proper API to it's geometric engine (what the CAD industry, for some unknown reason, calls a "kernel")
okso 4y ago
Declarative CAD systems like OpenSCAD are very attractive to people with a programmer mindset (in opposition to people trained on existing cads), but the space seems under developed. I dream of using something similar with better tools and language, and a feeling similar to writing HTML and CSS.
- bvrmn 4y ago
  OpenSCAD required bottom-up approach, starting from smallest features to be able to transform their position in a final model. Too hard for actual real things to make reason about. I'm a programmer for 20 years and can't use OpenSCAD. CadQuery is more abstract and manageable, allows to base your workflow on workplanes and start from big features, top-bottom. It's a nice approach for small models but assemblies are a real pain.
- constantcrying 4y ago
  OpenSCAD is extremely tedious to use, although I very much like the idea. The main Problem to me seems that it has zero facilities for helping you do parametric modelling. Usually, if you want to have a certain 2D shape in a parametric modeller you can specify a few basic parameters and let the software derive the rest, in OpenSCAD the duty is on you to derive a geometric equation which gives all points for the shape given the parametrs. It very quickly becomes non-stop highschool geometry for everything you want to do. I think you could have a language where you programatically specify a shape, which is then compiled into e.g. an array of points and can then be used in the programm.
  - WillAdams 4y ago
    Every time I sit down to do anything non-trivial in OpenSCAD, I wonder if there isn't some better way of representing things --- I'd like for there to to be something better, but usually the solution to any problem put forth on the OpenSCAD mailing list is: "learn this bit of math and apply it thusly". That said, I gave up on all this and have switched over to just modeling toolpaths: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview that way, I'm certain that whatever is modeled can actually be made, and I'm also certain that the modeling is not limited by arbitrary things. I've got an idea for a woodworking joint which I haven't been able to model so as to cut out in any other program, and I'm hoping this will let me finally manage it. I've been using OpenSCAD Graph Editor (OSGE) as a front-end: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor which has been working well, though I'm trying not to be distracted by: https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 having recently been announced.
samwillis 4y ago
This is a really good example of the issue with OS CAD. Fundamentally the issue comes down to a complete lack of capable 3D Parametric CAD Kernels [0]. These are the Linux kernel to a Linux distribution. They are the central core that implements the fundamental geometric structures and operations. The article comments on the difficulty with filleting (putting a radius on an edge), this is a fundamental operation any cad user would be doing many time a day. FreeCAD is built on top of the OpenCascade [1] geometric kernel, it has a legacy back to the 80s like most kernels, and is by far the most capable open source kernel. However, it lacks stable support for may geometric operations, including filleting. The only way we will see industrial level quality open source parametric CAD is with either a new modern kernel (I don't believe OpenCascade can be brought up to level), or if one of the other closed source kernels goes open source. A new kernel will be many 100s years of person work to produce. OnSpace (mentioned in the article) uses the Parasolid Kernel [2], the same kernel used by SolidWorks and many other packages. If you want to build a commercial cad package it by far the best option. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasolid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasolid
- samwillis 4y ago
  Just to add to this, fillets may seem trivial but they are a good example of the difficulties in parametric cad. Fillets are added to edges, edges can be formed both by a single feature (say an extruded 2d shape) or through the interaction of two or more other features (think of two extrusions 90deg to each other interacting and forming an edge). They can also link together or become unlinked via changes. Referencing these edges, and keeping track of that reference through changes to the parameters is fundamental to parametric cad. It's one of the areas that OpenCascade struggles with.
  - regularfry 4y ago
    Judging by where it fails, the filleting itself in OpenCascade has no problems keeping track of edges, where it seems to have difficulty is 1) saddle points, and 2) where the fillet size makes it intersect with a feature it's not responsible for. A fillet breaking when a parameter update changes the topology is just a specific example of the topological naming problem. I don't think that's specific to OpenCascade. In fact, just thinking it through, I wouldn't be at all surprised if 2) above is the same thing: the fillet itself changes the object topology enough that the basis edges for the fillet get lost. If so that's a Freecad thing rather than an OpenCascade thing. Maybe someone who's worked in that area can comment, it might be one of those things that gets better in 0.21.
choonway 4y ago
CAD should be a set of tools to take trial and error out of the workflow as much as possible. and the pain point of most of these tools is that they don't talk tools outside of the ecosystem very well.
jeffrallen 4y ago
My boss says: not sketchy at all, that URL. Also, beep is boundary representation, not binary rep.
BWStearns 4y ago
I’m a huge fan of OnShape. I wish they had a tier in between their free one and the $1500/yr slot but the software itself is great and the learning materials are really good too if you’re new to CAD generally. The plug-in and custom feature ecosystem is pretty great as well.
alberth 4y ago
Off topic: what’s a good free program to use to design a house (floor plan, evaluation view, etc)? Note: it doesn’t need 3D capabilities, just ability to create 2D blueprints.
- frankbreetz 4y ago
  LibreCAD is probably the best free one and Autodesk has fusion 360(free for personal use I believe) , but honestly most people prefer a pencil and paper at first.
- bitlax 4y ago
  I use SweetHome3D to arrange furniture before I move into a new place and I know that homebuilders and realtors use it professionally. I don't know to what extent it will be useful for a professional architect.
- prpl 4y ago
  Qcad is fine. I did drafting/autocad in High School (2002) and it wasn’t too bad. I tried sketchup and it is not great for 2D. For 3D I didn’t like it as much either, I felt like you have to use the mouse a lot more. I had a ton of trouble just subtracting a volume in sketchup (creating a window in an extruded floor plan)
the__alchemist 4y ago
I concur on FreeCAD having serious problems that appear almost immediately. SolidWorks has been a smoother experience for me, but the license can be expensive if you don't have an academic, military etc exception. It's nice to hear about OnShape. Will keep an eye.
mk_stjames 4y ago
The article has a small mistake, BRep stands for Boundary Representation, not Binary. Secondly, for point of reference, the basic design that the author uses as their benchmark that took them approximately an hour to an hour and a half to generate on these tools would, for me, an experienced user using a professional tool (CATIA in my case) take no longer than five minutes. Maybe more like sub 2 minutes if I was pushing it and the shape was known ahead of time. Just wanted to give people a perspective if they weren't aware of how quick something like that can be done by and experienced person using a professional tool.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  Exactly. In my case, it would take 5 minutes in Solidworks. This really adds up when you design hundreds or thousands of parts and assemblies a year. The added cost of the software is negligible in comparison to the labor savings.
  - InitialLastName 4y ago
    I do a lot of electrical/mechanical codesign, and I save more than the cost of my SolidWorks license every time I don't have to re-fabricate any parts because everything fit together perfectly the first time.
- unholiness 4y ago
  Yep. Here's a video of a CAD competition, with experienced Onshape user modeling simple rectilinear parts[0]. Video is sped up, but live modeling took under 3 minutes per part[1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzyI7xnGoPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzyI7xnGoPI [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whw9RrZz6XI&t=2073s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whw9RrZz6XI&t=2073s
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    Of course there are CAD competitions. I love stuff like this, thank you.
- 4y ago
pca006132 4y ago
If you are doing some simpler modeling and OpenSCAD is enough for the job, you may want to have a look at https://github.com/elalish/manifold https://github.com/elalish/manifold which is a mesh boolean library designed with robustness and performance in mind.
martinpw 4y ago
~20 years ago I interviewed at a large CAD software developer. The thing I remember most is when the interviewer pointed at six desks in the corner and said "that is the team doing fillets and blends". It is relatively easy to get to a 90% solution but really handling complex evaluations for demanding users is a massive undertaking. Hard to see open source software getting there.
Ptchd 4y ago
Sometimes I do most of the work in FreeCAD and finish it in Blender (for things that aren't easily done in FreeCAD).
constantcrying 4y ago
I very much like the idea of FreeCAD as a FOSS 3D CAD Software. And I have actually used it to do some projects, but I have to say it felt janky at every point and quite prone to crashing doing many operations. The parametric 2D moddeling worked extremely well, but as soon as you moved into 3D world it became quite unpleasant to use.
Ginger-Pickles 4y ago
The business model for all CAD software companies inevitably trends toward stagnation and lock-in, because CAD software companies don't use CAD software -- they just develop it. The motivations are self-defeating. Typical CAD companies can only ever try to keep up with user demands and keep them from leaving to greener pastures, while squeezing customers for profit. Examples: Dassault Solidworks (stagnant), PTC ProE/Creo (dying), OnShape (bought by PTC, on the road to death), Autodesk AutoCAD (stagnant), Inventor (stagnant), Fusion (new, cloud-based, pay-to-use vending machine). The only commercial exception to this is CAD software from Siemens, which is forty years old and continues to get better. Siemens is an infrastructure company [0], not a CAD software company. They use the software they develop to do the things their company does. Their CAD products -- NX (top-tier) and Solid Edge (mid-tier) -- are used by Siemens to design the hardware (motors, turbines, and so on) that make up their core business (trains, generators, etc.). Revenue from selling CAD software is just a side-effect. Improvement and maintenance of NX & Solid Edge serves to improve the product for its users, who are also its owners. They are not motivated simply to find new ways to increase profitability by squeezing out recurring revenue from their CAD customers. This is why Siemens can license the Parasolid kernel to other CAD vendors -- because the others will will never catch up. For years, Siemens barely marketed Solid Edge at all -- they are that good. (Apple is another example of a company that uses the tools and products they sell to develop the tools and products they sell; Steve Jobs may not have been a programmer, but dropping acid probably helped him to understand recursion.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens#Products,_services_and_contribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens#Products,_services_and...
1299651405 4y ago
This is my article, I am a little surprised to see it posted here, its a bit half baked. Yes, it's Boundary-rep not Binary-rep. The timings are a bit stupid, more of a reflection of me approaching the modelling wrong. I re-did the OnShape and FreeCAD models after watching a video of someone solving it in Solidworks, and it took me about 20 mins for each. This hasn't changed my opinion on the different programs, OnShape is good, FreeCAD is pretty good if you learn to live with it, and Solvespace is interesting, but not nearly as powerful as either.
somat 4y ago
I was vaguely horrified when it was mentioned that their solvespace model was not parametrized. so I made one that was. https://nl1.outband.net/extra/angle_post_bracket.slvs https://nl1.outband.net/extra/angle_post_bracket.slvs Solvespace has a lot of problems, I think I would have trouble using it in a professional setting, however, it is such a joy to use. it feels like the program has captured the pure essence of parametric modeling and put it in program form. lightweight and nimble, nothing extra, just plain fun to use. until your models start exploding, which happens often in solvespace. I mainly did the above as a sort of kata, to stretch those metaphorical solvespace muscles
- 1299651405 4y ago
  That's really nice, thanks.
WillAdams 4y ago
There is at least one OS app working on a new kernel: https://fornjot.app https://fornjot.app
ruevs 4y ago
The comparison is pretty interesting, however SolveSpace is badly misrepresented by "not parametric". In my opinion easy, stable and very flexible (the same tools are used in 2d and 3d) parametric modelling is it's greatest strength. So I decided to redraw the model in SolveSpace fully parametric. It took me 18 minutes. Here is the result: https://youtu.be/yUa3fnDbeWw https://youtu.be/yUa3fnDbeWw
mmiscool 4y ago
There is a new CAD modeler in town called JSketcher. https://github.com/xibyte/jsketcher https://github.com/xibyte/jsketcher A hosted version a recent build is available to try here. https://autodrop.cloud/jsketcher/ https://autodrop.cloud/jsketcher/ It is in early beta and is usable. No assembly support yet but it is planned for.

125 points by app4soft 4y ago

OnShape is amazing. Solidworks paradigm, not surprising because the founders are ex-solidworks. Just beautifully done web app, works great on iPad and everything. And a really nice community-driven plugin capability. From hex infill for 3D printing to mesh deformation, there’s probably a plug-in. And the assemblies and modeling are very nice. For top-down parametric design I don’t think you can do better. I’ve got no connection to onshape other than having used it for years, for probably hundreds of models. Love it.

steve_adams_86 4y ago
I passed this over just yesterday and went with a fusion 360 demo but you’ve convinced me to give it a shot. I’ve been having issues with my cheap-ish peristaltic pumps and realized I’d either need to spend way too much or build/3d print something myself in order to resolve the issues. The cloud aspect of fusion seriously kills my enthusiasm for it.
- elcritch 4y ago
  Note that OnShape is pure cloud (web app) if I understand it correctly -- so perhaps it provides the best parts of a web native app too. The Fusion 360 move to cloud appear to be purely aimed at justifying forcing a subscription model for Fusion stuff. Though the monthly price for hobbyist isn't half bad.
  - nraynaud 4y ago
    Don’t believe the hype, onshape is like a Cad software on Citrix. It’s not spreading the cost of computing a complex fillet over hundreds of machines (or even better, running the same operation in the browser and the cloud and letting the fastest one win). They spin one EC2 for you. So you really don’t get any benefit from the cloud.
    - BWStearns 4y ago
      I don’t need a beefy windows machine in addition to my MBP for my CAD work so there’s the cross platform/consistent performance benefit.
      - iancmceachern 4y ago
        A lot of people have pretty good success running solidworks in wind on a mac.
    - navane 4y ago
      the cloud benefit is in the version control, branching, merging, multiplayer, never having to send files, always working in the same version as everyone else. It's in everything communication, not in quickly calculating a fillet. I also got very sad when I learned it was bought by PTC.
- 015a 4y ago
  I'd also recommend giving Shapr3D a try. Its an extremely nice up-and-coming CAD suite. Very little cloud integration as well (they only very recently added model syncing to your account). Their lineage is definitely as an iPad app, but its been ported with perfect fidelity to MacOS and Windows, and I think that touch-first small-screen lineage has forced them to produce a tool that's so quick and productive to just pick up and get to modeling. Its also built on Siemens Parasolid, same as SolidWorks and OnShape. [1] https://www.shapr3d.com/ https://www.shapr3d.com/
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    Bizarre, does this mean Shapr has parametrics now? I tried it last year and it didn’t offer that, so I’ve ignored it since. I loved the UI and actually liked the iPad experience too. Maybe it’s time to give it another chance! Thanks for the tip. I have to say, my biggest hesitation about these kinds of software is knowing anything I create is inevitably trapped behind a subscription. $50/month to maintain access to my designs is really steep! I suppose I can output static models, but to use parametric features, I’ll always need to be subscribed.
joshu 4y ago
I did the Model Mania 2001 part 1 challenge in a little under 18 minutes. The part 2 challenge involved only changing the 45 deg to 55 and the height of the center of the bore, so less than a minute. I know Fusion 360 but it's amazing how fast Onshape can be.
martinhath 4y ago
OnShape is pretty nice, but their language, FeatureScript, is a disaster.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Miserlou57 4y ago

I spent the last year working closely with someone who spent their entire career entrenched in one of the big boy CAD software companies in one of those very technical roles you do when you avoid management your entire life. He had a lot of great stories. Anyway, while I don’t really have an opinion on the matter, I feel like sharing his opinion here despite not totally understanding the reasoning behind it. It seemed his opinion was that Onshape had great potential to disrupt the industry, but he explained in much funnier terms a tidal wave of celebration and relief washed over his company and the rest of the industry when PTC bought Onshape out. He seemed to think nobody could take a great product and run it into the ground like PTC could, as if they were up there with legendary failures like Microsoft buying Nokia, Yahoo/Tumblr, AOL Time Warner, etc.

auxym 4y ago
I am a mechanical engineer and CAD user (never worked for a CAD software company). I second this feeling. OnShape was founded by the original creators of SolidWorks before it was bought by Dassault. It showed great promise in being efficient, powerful, user friendly, built in PLM (SCM for CAD basically) and surprisingly low cost. Compare hundreds a year for a fully loaded OnShape seat subscription to about 20k/yr/seat we paid for CATIA and some bells and whistles (PLM, FEA, etc). The day OnShape was bought was PTC/Siemens is quite comparable to me, to the HN feeling when Adobe recently announced the purchase of Figma.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  Exactly, it's like when eagle was bought by autodesk. Also to add to this, solidworks can be had for ~4k for a perpetual license and ~1300 a year after that for maintenance. So it sits right between onshape and stuff like catia cost wise.
varikin 4y ago
My first job out college was at PTC first in tech support for Windchill and then as a dev for Windchill. Windchill is PTC's PLM/VCS for CAD files. I never really touched CAD. I launched PROe a handful of times, but mainly to test some integration into Windchill. Over the course of 3 years there, I saw maybe 6 or so companies bought by PTC and nothing ever really done with them. Probably the most successful was FlexPLM which for some reason was built on Windchill to offer PLM type software for the apparel industry. It only survived because PTC ignored it. PTC is a company full of too much bureaucracy and managers all trying to push features over completeness.

eps 4y ago

What's "filleting"?

thrwawy74 4y ago
I believe this command found in AutoCAD: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2021/ENU/AutoCAD-Core/files/GUID-64F8B700-23B3-4BD6-8C03-66121AA13E8F-htm.html https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore...
exmadscientist 4y ago
Rounding the corners of things. Imagine a perfect cube. The edges will be very, very sharp, and this is bad for any number of obvious reasons. To fillet the edges is to round them off: now the cube is much easier to handle. These are "outside" fillets, and you could perhaps make them with a router bit. There are also "inside" fillets (say you "drilled" a perfectly cylindrical hole partway into the cube; an inside fillet would be along the circular bottom edge of the hole), which can't be made after the fact (to do so would involve adding material). The geometry only gets more complex from there: most things aren't cubes or cylinders! Fillets are at once extremely simple, extremely complicated, and extremely important. They are siblings to chamfers, which are the same idea but instead of being round just involve breaking the edge. You could chamfer the edge on that hypothetical cube with a single touch from a sander or (big) file. Fillets require more care.
bvrmn 4y ago
To add to explanation: inner fillets relax material stress in the corners and make final produced thing more durable and strong. You pretty much can't use CAD without fillets for real industrial applications.
dcminter 4y ago
Sibling comments address your question, but it occurred to me that this anecdote (which you may well already know) from Andy Hertzfeld illustrates why fillets are a vital feature: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_...
4y ago

nyanpasu64 4y ago

From my brief research, OnShape is browser-based software-as-a-service which you can rent but never own, which never fails to sadden me.

nraynaud 4y ago
The renting part is the same for fusion360
alkonaut 4y ago
While it’s sad to depend on a web service that could be gone tomorrow, it’s not like we really “own” software installed locally either. License agreements contain the phrase “the software is licensed, not bought” for a reason. For example the software I sell in my day job has an expiration date of a year, there is no perpetual license. It literally won’t start after a year. The difference between that and a web service is pretty slim.
- mrelectric 4y ago
  It's not. Ask anyone working on MMO server emulators. Once the server is gone, that's it. With thin browser client you might as well create a new CAD software from scratch. Having actual software on pc means you can at least attempt to crack it.
elteto 4y ago
Unfortunately, there are no (major) CAD programs you can own outside of FOSS.
- lh7777 4y ago
  Solidworks is still available to buy as a perpetual license -- pricing starts at $4200 for Standard. It costs $1500/yr for "maintenance", but that's optional if you don't need updates.

szemy2 4y ago

I really like Shapr3D -- the entire onboarding and then modelling process feels like a new generation of tools.

alpaca128 4y ago
The restrictions on their free tier are so ambiguous I have no idea whether it would work for me or not.
mihaaly 4y ago
Not really new as it is built on top of Parasolid. The nice UI is fairly new, dictated by the tablet environment and style given while building upon traditional CAD approaches. Their claim of 'reinventing CAD' is very difficult to take seriously when they basically leverage on a 40 years old traditional and highly optimized product where the success point is only that it was made available on tablets when Parasolid compiled their kernel on the then newest Apple hardware (which was powerful enough now to run Parasolid). More like being in the right place in the right time kind of thing, not revolution, exposing the essential functionality of a huge set, while graciously forgetting that CAD is not only about accurate solid modeling (a huge part of it though) but coordination, engineering and workflow matters, without those it is a first unrealised step towards a product, not a reinvention at all, not even close. Nicely simplified handling though, kudos there, exposing well the subset of Parasolid functions being enough. Very good in its niche, in the domain of simple pretty things where forgetting hard matters is acceptable, democratising part (geometry) of the design for more people. The advances in making additive manufacturing available to the masses could elevate it further, true to its roots, by riding the right horses. (assuming it could connect to other tools in a similarly simplified manner that could do the remaing jobs for it in realizing a product)

IshKebab 4y ago

SolveSpace is much better than FreeCAD. Honestly it's the only free CAD worth bothering with. The biggest limitation is no fillets or bevels, but it sounds like FreeCAD can't do that either. But honestly if you're doing a decent amount of CAD as a hobbyist the only sensible option is to pirate Solidworks.

krisoft 4y ago
> doing a decent amount of CAD as a hobbyist the only sensible option is to pirate Solidworks I’m a hobyist and I pay for a Fusion 360 licence. Tell me how that is not “sensible”. I pay for my tools, I pay for my materials, why would I not pay for software which makes my life easier and more pleasant?
- IshKebab 4y ago
  It's not sensible because it's £500 per year! To put it in perspective, MATLAB is a similar "if you have to ask" industrial piece of software and their hobby license is like £125 one-off. (Not including any toolkits but still.) Most hobbyists are not going to blow £500/year on CAD software.
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    Solidworks for makers is only $99 a year, way less than fusion.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Most hobbyists might not but there are plenty of us who do. It "saves" me more than that when working on projects.
ur-whale 4y ago
> SolveSpace is much better than FreeCAD. True in many regards, e.g. the UI is way better and the constraint solver is more intuitive. But very incorrect in others, specifically: - SolveSpace has, IIRC, no fillets - SolveSpace does not have a proper API to it's geometric engine (what the CAD industry, for some unknown reason, calls a "kernel")

okso 4y ago

Declarative CAD systems like OpenSCAD are very attractive to people with a programmer mindset (in opposition to people trained on existing cads), but the space seems under developed. I dream of using something similar with better tools and language, and a feeling similar to writing HTML and CSS.

bvrmn 4y ago
OpenSCAD required bottom-up approach, starting from smallest features to be able to transform their position in a final model. Too hard for actual real things to make reason about. I'm a programmer for 20 years and can't use OpenSCAD. CadQuery is more abstract and manageable, allows to base your workflow on workplanes and start from big features, top-bottom. It's a nice approach for small models but assemblies are a real pain.
constantcrying 4y ago
OpenSCAD is extremely tedious to use, although I very much like the idea. The main Problem to me seems that it has zero facilities for helping you do parametric modelling. Usually, if you want to have a certain 2D shape in a parametric modeller you can specify a few basic parameters and let the software derive the rest, in OpenSCAD the duty is on you to derive a geometric equation which gives all points for the shape given the parametrs. It very quickly becomes non-stop highschool geometry for everything you want to do. I think you could have a language where you programatically specify a shape, which is then compiled into e.g. an array of points and can then be used in the programm.
- WillAdams 4y ago
  Every time I sit down to do anything non-trivial in OpenSCAD, I wonder if there isn't some better way of representing things --- I'd like for there to to be something better, but usually the solution to any problem put forth on the OpenSCAD mailing list is: "learn this bit of math and apply it thusly". That said, I gave up on all this and have switched over to just modeling toolpaths: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview that way, I'm certain that whatever is modeled can actually be made, and I'm also certain that the modeling is not limited by arbitrary things. I've got an idea for a woodworking joint which I haven't been able to model so as to cut out in any other program, and I'm hoping this will let me finally manage it. I've been using OpenSCAD Graph Editor (OSGE) as a front-end: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor which has been working well, though I'm trying not to be distracted by: https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 having recently been announced.

samwillis 4y ago

This is a really good example of the issue with OS CAD. Fundamentally the issue comes down to a complete lack of capable 3D Parametric CAD Kernels [0]. These are the Linux kernel to a Linux distribution. They are the central core that implements the fundamental geometric structures and operations. The article comments on the difficulty with filleting (putting a radius on an edge), this is a fundamental operation any cad user would be doing many time a day. FreeCAD is built on top of the OpenCascade [1] geometric kernel, it has a legacy back to the 80s like most kernels, and is by far the most capable open source kernel. However, it lacks stable support for may geometric operations, including filleting. The only way we will see industrial level quality open source parametric CAD is with either a new modern kernel (I don't believe OpenCascade can be brought up to level), or if one of the other closed source kernels goes open source. A new kernel will be many 100s years of person work to produce. OnSpace (mentioned in the article) uses the Parasolid Kernel [2], the same kernel used by SolidWorks and many other packages. If you want to build a commercial cad package it by far the best option. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasolid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasolid

samwillis 4y ago
Just to add to this, fillets may seem trivial but they are a good example of the difficulties in parametric cad. Fillets are added to edges, edges can be formed both by a single feature (say an extruded 2d shape) or through the interaction of two or more other features (think of two extrusions 90deg to each other interacting and forming an edge). They can also link together or become unlinked via changes. Referencing these edges, and keeping track of that reference through changes to the parameters is fundamental to parametric cad. It's one of the areas that OpenCascade struggles with.
- regularfry 4y ago
  Judging by where it fails, the filleting itself in OpenCascade has no problems keeping track of edges, where it seems to have difficulty is 1) saddle points, and 2) where the fillet size makes it intersect with a feature it's not responsible for. A fillet breaking when a parameter update changes the topology is just a specific example of the topological naming problem. I don't think that's specific to OpenCascade. In fact, just thinking it through, I wouldn't be at all surprised if 2) above is the same thing: the fillet itself changes the object topology enough that the basis edges for the fillet get lost. If so that's a Freecad thing rather than an OpenCascade thing. Maybe someone who's worked in that area can comment, it might be one of those things that gets better in 0.21.

choonway 4y ago

CAD should be a set of tools to take trial and error out of the workflow as much as possible. and the pain point of most of these tools is that they don't talk tools outside of the ecosystem very well.

jeffrallen 4y ago

My boss says: not sketchy at all, that URL. Also, beep is boundary representation, not binary rep.

BWStearns 4y ago

I’m a huge fan of OnShape. I wish they had a tier in between their free one and the $1500/yr slot but the software itself is great and the learning materials are really good too if you’re new to CAD generally. The plug-in and custom feature ecosystem is pretty great as well.

alberth 4y ago

Off topic: what’s a good free program to use to design a house (floor plan, evaluation view, etc)? Note: it doesn’t need 3D capabilities, just ability to create 2D blueprints.

frankbreetz 4y ago
LibreCAD is probably the best free one and Autodesk has fusion 360(free for personal use I believe) , but honestly most people prefer a pencil and paper at first.
bitlax 4y ago
I use SweetHome3D to arrange furniture before I move into a new place and I know that homebuilders and realtors use it professionally. I don't know to what extent it will be useful for a professional architect.
prpl 4y ago
Qcad is fine. I did drafting/autocad in High School (2002) and it wasn’t too bad. I tried sketchup and it is not great for 2D. For 3D I didn’t like it as much either, I felt like you have to use the mouse a lot more. I had a ton of trouble just subtracting a volume in sketchup (creating a window in an extruded floor plan)

the__alchemist 4y ago

I concur on FreeCAD having serious problems that appear almost immediately. SolidWorks has been a smoother experience for me, but the license can be expensive if you don't have an academic, military etc exception. It's nice to hear about OnShape. Will keep an eye.

mk_stjames 4y ago

The article has a small mistake, BRep stands for Boundary Representation, not Binary. Secondly, for point of reference, the basic design that the author uses as their benchmark that took them approximately an hour to an hour and a half to generate on these tools would, for me, an experienced user using a professional tool (CATIA in my case) take no longer than five minutes. Maybe more like sub 2 minutes if I was pushing it and the shape was known ahead of time. Just wanted to give people a perspective if they weren't aware of how quick something like that can be done by and experienced person using a professional tool.

iancmceachern 4y ago
Exactly. In my case, it would take 5 minutes in Solidworks. This really adds up when you design hundreds or thousands of parts and assemblies a year. The added cost of the software is negligible in comparison to the labor savings.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  I do a lot of electrical/mechanical codesign, and I save more than the cost of my SolidWorks license every time I don't have to re-fabricate any parts because everything fit together perfectly the first time.
unholiness 4y ago
Yep. Here's a video of a CAD competition, with experienced Onshape user modeling simple rectilinear parts[0]. Video is sped up, but live modeling took under 3 minutes per part[1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzyI7xnGoPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzyI7xnGoPI [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whw9RrZz6XI&t=2073s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whw9RrZz6XI&t=2073s
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Of course there are CAD competitions. I love stuff like this, thank you.
4y ago

pca006132 4y ago

If you are doing some simpler modeling and OpenSCAD is enough for the job, you may want to have a look at https://github.com/elalish/manifold https://github.com/elalish/manifold which is a mesh boolean library designed with robustness and performance in mind.

martinpw 4y ago

~20 years ago I interviewed at a large CAD software developer. The thing I remember most is when the interviewer pointed at six desks in the corner and said "that is the team doing fillets and blends". It is relatively easy to get to a 90% solution but really handling complex evaluations for demanding users is a massive undertaking. Hard to see open source software getting there.

Ptchd 4y ago

Sometimes I do most of the work in FreeCAD and finish it in Blender (for things that aren't easily done in FreeCAD).

constantcrying 4y ago

I very much like the idea of FreeCAD as a FOSS 3D CAD Software. And I have actually used it to do some projects, but I have to say it felt janky at every point and quite prone to crashing doing many operations. The parametric 2D moddeling worked extremely well, but as soon as you moved into 3D world it became quite unpleasant to use.

Ginger-Pickles 4y ago

The business model for all CAD software companies inevitably trends toward stagnation and lock-in, because CAD software companies don't use CAD software -- they just develop it. The motivations are self-defeating. Typical CAD companies can only ever try to keep up with user demands and keep them from leaving to greener pastures, while squeezing customers for profit. Examples: Dassault Solidworks (stagnant), PTC ProE/Creo (dying), OnShape (bought by PTC, on the road to death), Autodesk AutoCAD (stagnant), Inventor (stagnant), Fusion (new, cloud-based, pay-to-use vending machine). The only commercial exception to this is CAD software from Siemens, which is forty years old and continues to get better. Siemens is an infrastructure company [0], not a CAD software company. They use the software they develop to do the things their company does. Their CAD products -- NX (top-tier) and Solid Edge (mid-tier) -- are used by Siemens to design the hardware (motors, turbines, and so on) that make up their core business (trains, generators, etc.). Revenue from selling CAD software is just a side-effect. Improvement and maintenance of NX & Solid Edge serves to improve the product for its users, who are also its owners. They are not motivated simply to find new ways to increase profitability by squeezing out recurring revenue from their CAD customers. This is why Siemens can license the Parasolid kernel to other CAD vendors -- because the others will will never catch up. For years, Siemens barely marketed Solid Edge at all -- they are that good. (Apple is another example of a company that uses the tools and products they sell to develop the tools and products they sell; Steve Jobs may not have been a programmer, but dropping acid probably helped him to understand recursion.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens#Products,_services_and_contribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens#Products,_services_and...

1299651405 4y ago

This is my article, I am a little surprised to see it posted here, its a bit half baked. Yes, it's Boundary-rep not Binary-rep. The timings are a bit stupid, more of a reflection of me approaching the modelling wrong. I re-did the OnShape and FreeCAD models after watching a video of someone solving it in Solidworks, and it took me about 20 mins for each. This hasn't changed my opinion on the different programs, OnShape is good, FreeCAD is pretty good if you learn to live with it, and Solvespace is interesting, but not nearly as powerful as either.

somat 4y ago

I was vaguely horrified when it was mentioned that their solvespace model was not parametrized. so I made one that was. https://nl1.outband.net/extra/angle_post_bracket.slvs https://nl1.outband.net/extra/angle_post_bracket.slvs Solvespace has a lot of problems, I think I would have trouble using it in a professional setting, however, it is such a joy to use. it feels like the program has captured the pure essence of parametric modeling and put it in program form. lightweight and nimble, nothing extra, just plain fun to use. until your models start exploding, which happens often in solvespace. I mainly did the above as a sort of kata, to stretch those metaphorical solvespace muscles

1299651405 4y ago
That's really nice, thanks.

WillAdams 4y ago

There is at least one OS app working on a new kernel: https://fornjot.app https://fornjot.app

ruevs 4y ago

The comparison is pretty interesting, however SolveSpace is badly misrepresented by "not parametric". In my opinion easy, stable and very flexible (the same tools are used in 2d and 3d) parametric modelling is it's greatest strength. So I decided to redraw the model in SolveSpace fully parametric. It took me 18 minutes. Here is the result: https://youtu.be/yUa3fnDbeWw https://youtu.be/yUa3fnDbeWw

mmiscool 4y ago

There is a new CAD modeler in town called JSketcher. https://github.com/xibyte/jsketcher https://github.com/xibyte/jsketcher A hosted version a recent build is available to try here. https://autodrop.cloud/jsketcher/ https://autodrop.cloud/jsketcher/ It is in early beta and is usable. No assembly support yet but it is planned for.