6 ms·

History of CAD

160 points by nill0 2y ago

tape_measure 2y ago
I'll have to work through the 650 pages. I use CATIA v5 every day, first released in 1998. It's sharp and crusty and huge, but does everything (with the right license).
- smartis2812 2y ago
  Me too. But I really looking forward to it.
- nraynaud 2y ago
  Funny, I'm French, and I know people who developed a bit of it.
  - buildsjets 2y ago
    If you really push CATIA hard, you can get it to crash in French, or at least crash with a poorly translated error message. "The Document cannot be unloaded because he is dirty" was one of my favorites.
    - satiric 2y ago
      I like the "Click OK to terminate" error. As though it wants to make sure it has my permission to crash.
      - WillAdams 2y ago
        Yeah, the whole button for user to click "Okay" for something which is abjectly _not_ acceptable has _got_ to go away. Please replace it with "Understood" or "Acknowledged".
        guenthert 2y ago
        Or the not too uncommon "dismiss".
        buildsjets 2y ago
        I keep a PowerPoint with screenshots of bizarre CATIA/ENOVIA error messages. It's up to 8 slides now, completely covered with errors. A few other highlights: "As it was too important, the number of workspaces has been reduced." "Primitive Value is not an AggrInstance" "Instead of directly transforming an import, we recommend you apply the Add Position contextual command onto the solid. Then the required GSD transformation must be applied to the axis system of the Positioning Set. Do you want to go on with the transformation or quit the command and follow our recommendation? (Yes/No buttons)" "A problem occurs during Process." "Error: Error Stack is empty." an empty dialog box with options of "OK" or "Cancel." "An error condition has been detected, but no error information." While performing a Surface to Surface analysis: Status: 104% complete, 1193hr 2min 46sec remaining. "Cannot bitblt" "Technological Package found use appropriate engine to handle it. It can not be saved as a File."
- buildsjets 2y ago
  Crusty it is. The fillet tool STILL totally sucks after 27 years, and I STILL frequently find myself needing to define surface geometry, fillet the surface, and use that to split the solid rather than just directly filleting the solid, in order to get the same type of fillet intersections that you get when you machine the part.
rdtsc 2y ago
> Lemon felt strongly that timesharing systems were the wave of the future and that SDRC should focus on providing software on these systems rather than license its software for a one-time fee. Initially, the company sold ANSYS and NASTRAN on a timesharing basis using computers operated by U. S. Steel. SDRC did SaaS in the 1970s, before SaaS was cool. > In September 1994 the company announced that it would be restating its revenues and earning for 1992 through the first half of 1994 to include a $30 million charge relating to sales discrepancies in its Asian operations [...] The company immediately terminated Tony Tolani, a vice president and general manager of SDRC’s Far Eastern Operations. I was going to say they cooked the books before it was cool, too, but that's a much older trick. They claimed they sold all this software while in reality they just dumped it in some warehouse at the Cincinnati airport. Then proceeded to sell their shares before shit hit fan. SEC link with more details: https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/litreleases/lr15325.txt https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/litreleases/lr15325.txt That is to say the downright corrupt and shady sales and management team almost killed the company. It recovered eventually and ended up being bought by EDS > While the software’s geometric modeling capabilities were improved it was the package’s user interface that really impressed me. Icon menus typically were only two levels deep compared to five and six levels in other systems [...] I wrote in the April 1995 issue of EAReport: “I-DEAS has the best interactive user interface available today for mechanical design and analysis. I agree. Its interface would look odd and clunky by today's metrics and might even been considered unusual at that time, but it was really nice to use after some practice. They seemingly put some effort into its design.
- branko_d 2y ago
  I remember working with SDRC I-DEAS API in the early 2000s - it was well documented and "clean looking" compared to something like PTC's Pro/TOOLKIT. Interestingly, it was also CORBA-based, and it worked quite well over LAN.
  - rdtsc 2y ago
    I worked on I-DEAS briefly, on the FEM part, but not the UI, so never got the chance to talk to the UI team. It was a wild time. Windows NT was taking the CAD/CAE world by storm, especially with much cheaper graphics cards available. We still supported SGI, AIX, HP, Sun, but the writing was on the wall already, and there was a break-neck pace to port everything to Windows.
ofrzeta 2y ago
I recently learned that there is a free community edition of Solid Edge: https://resources.sw.siemens.com/en-US/download-solid-edge-community-edition/ https://resources.sw.siemens.com/en-US/download-solid-edge-c... According to the History of CAD Solid Edge originally came from Intergraph. Many packages/kernels seem to have changed hands over the course of decades.
rurban 2y ago
Good counter on John Walker's "The Autodesk File" https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/
delhanty 2y ago
Seeing as David Weisberg's "History of CAD" is trending today I submitted "History of Unigraphics" by 3 of the original Unigraphics 7 dwarfs. Edit: Unigraphics X SDRC became the system we know today as Siemens NX It came out at the end of 2024 - these guys must all be around 80 by now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43169194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43169194
vincnetas 2y ago
tangential : I still can't get over the idea that shapr3d license is subscription only. You cannot buy the software. This means that your whole work/workflows ceases to exist if you not continuing to pay. No fallback option.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  Unfortunately, the printing industry rolled over for Adobe and set a precedent. An alternative to Shapr3D might be: https://www.plasticity.xyz/ https://www.plasticity.xyz/ which has an interesting license and licensing model (I bought a Studio license at launch, but haven't used it since). Fortunately, FreeCAD is markedly improved, and for folks who want something light-weight and intuitive, I would recommend trying: Dune 3D as discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958
  - bsimpson 2y ago
    I just started using CAD last week, but as I understand: - Plasticity is so expensive because it uses one of the major kernels (SIEMENS Parasolid). Most of the licensing fee actually goes to them. You can find the Show HN post with a much cheaper price before he changed kernels. - There was a firm called Ondsel that was trying to improve the UX of FreeCAD by selling a fork. It recently folded. One of their employees is trying the same as AstoCAD. The idea is that you fund the development of FreeCAD, and you get the improved binaries before the work lands upstream.
    - WillAdams 2y ago
      That is my understanding as well. Curious what CAD program (programs?) you are using and what sort of work you are doing and how you are approaching it.
nraynaud 2y ago
I don't seem to find a dead tree version of the book. I don't know how much work it entails, but maybe the profits of such a sale could go to the good cause they were advertising? Maybe it's the right opportunity to ask if you know a good online service for printing/assembling of big documents.
- delhanty 2y ago
  >Becoming a book publisher wasn’t on my bingo card when I started Shapr3D. Yet here we go! For now, it’s only available to select customers—but if there’s enough interest, we’ll make it accessible to the public. The book spans 860 pages and weighs approximately 3 kg—just as heavy as CAD is. Become a select customer of Shapr3D and their CEO István Csanády might send you one. https://twitter.com/istvan_csanady/status/1888298612167225663 https://twitter.com/istvan_csanady/status/188829861216722566...
amelius 2y ago
Is there an overview of which software is using what kernel?
- nill0 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel "Kernel developers section"
  - amelius 2y ago
    Thanks!
- phkahler 2y ago
  In the open source world there are 2 (maybe 3) geometry kernels that handle NURBS and can produce STEP files. Open Cascade, which is GPL now but had a commercial origin. It's quite good and is used in FreeCAD, Salome, KiCAD (EDA), Horizon EDA, Dune 3d, and probably several more. And then Solvespace which is the only user of it's own bespoke kernel which we are still trying to make more robust. This one is also limited to a certain subset of NURBS constructs but is still quite useful. Open Cascade may be the most difficult piece of FLOSS IP to recreate outside the Linux Kernel. In fact I'd say it'd be harder to replace given the number of people with interest and the background to work on these two different type of software.
  - gorgoiler 2y ago
    Thank you so much for all the work you and your colleagues do to bring solvespace to the world. I believe it has the potential to be one of — and probably already is in — a class of super impactful, all time classic pieces of software alongside the likes of Firefox, Gimp, Inkscape, et al.
    - WillAdams 2y ago
      Agreed, though I would put it in a more rarified category of "Opensource software which has innovated in terms of interface in a unique and meaningful fashion." --- other tools I put in this space are: - LyX - pyspread - ipe
WillAdams 2y ago
I've been reading through a PDF on my Kindle Scribe which I downloaded from the original site --- it's a great overview, and most importantly, includes citations and references to the various papers where folks shared their research/progress. These days of course, one would just get _The Essentials of CAGD_ and similar texts, or read: https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/ https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/ or watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds Highly recommended for anyone who wants an understanding of how modern CAD software came about. For my part, I have found it invaluable in working on my current project as described at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43159236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43159236
- anoother 2y ago
  A PDF of the submission? Would be grateful if you had a link; I can't seem to find one on the website.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    Is it up on archive.org? https://web.archive.org/web/20230325080337/https://www.cadhistory.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230325080337/https://www.cadhi... if not, drop me an e-mail at my username here @aol.com and I'll dig it out.
    - seemaze 2y ago
      found a PDF copy here: http://images.designworldonline.com.s3.amazonaws.com/CADhistory/85739614-The-Engineering-Design-Revolution-CAD-History.pdf http://images.designworldonline.com.s3.amazonaws.com/CADhist...
rjsw 2y ago
Spotted one typo, the reference to Hanchette in the section on Matra Datavision should be Hachette. That section could also mention that the Matra software is now opensource.
- ghostly_s 2y ago
  Why are you telling us?
scarygliders 2y ago
Hmmm, no mention of Teknicad? sadface I seem to be the only person (along with 3 others who were my cow-orkers) who ever used or heard of Teknicad , running on Tektronix Unix workstations and terminals :)
buildsjets 2y ago
One thing about this history is that it kind of light on the development of CAM, Computer Aided Manufacturing, which was co-developed along with CAD, and in some cases was actually a predecessor to CAD. I recommend "A Possible First Use of CAM/CAD" by Norman Sanders as a short history of CAM in the 1950s/1960s. https://inria.hal.science/hal-01526813 https://inria.hal.science/hal-01526813
- WillAdams 2y ago
  Excellent point, and interesting paper. Arguably though, CAM is a totally different subject, though as you point out, inextricably intertwined with CAD in their origin. Wasn't it a pretty straight-forward lineage of: G-code is developed, there are a couple of commercial apps which write to it, then when the EMC software is release and Mach3/LinuxCNC/Grbl become prevalent there was an explosion of different software options? Just not sure what one could say about that which would be interesting.
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
How does Shapr compare to FreeCAD?
- WillAdams 2y ago
  It uses a robust, commercial CAD kernel, and has an interface optimized for touch/stylus (originally it only ran on iPad Pro when an Apple Pencil was available). Similar programs to consider include Moment of Inspiration and Plasticity for commercial, and Dune 3D for opensource.
satiric 2y ago
Here's a neat paper about Boeing's use of CAD and CAM in the 50s and 60s. I particularly like the story about their first computer-made part drawings. There were no printers, and plotters were too inaccurate; but they had CNC mills and they realized "if you can cut in three dimensions, you can certainly scratch in two." So Boeing's first computer-made part drawings were engraved on sheets of aluminum. https://inria.hal.science/hal-01526813v1/document https://inria.hal.science/hal-01526813v1/document
endofreach 2y ago
Just wanted to say that i found out about shapr3d here on HN through a comment a while back. And– though it does sound dramtic– it changed my life. It got me into CAD modelling without any experience. Which i wouldn't have tried on a computer, but on my ipad, it was so easy and intuitive to get started. Since then i've designed so many things. From weird furniture ideas to replacement parts for my vacuum up to the mot important 3d models of a device-prototype. It's super fun, intuitive and i think in general the most expensive software subscription i pay for, also hands-down the software that impacted my life the most (as a consumer/user).
- WillAdams 2y ago
  Have you tried any other CAD programs? If you have access to a computer, could you try Dune 3D and write up a quick comparison? It seems the easiest-to-use of the opensource options.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Have you tried Shapr3d? The tablet UX is entirely different from any other CAD program. You are asking to compare apples to oranges.
    - WillAdams 2y ago
      Yes, I did try it --- got part of the way through the tutorials and decided that the UI wasn't appealing enough to overcome the price/license.
  - endofreach 2y ago
    Interesting, didn't know about dune3d. I can't try today though. What are you expecting from my comparison? If i don't forget, i can come back here in a few days if had time to try dune and tell you about my experience.
    - WillAdams 2y ago
      I am just curious how Dune 3D "feels" to a person accustomed to Shapr3D --- the former is notable among opensource applications for having a touch/trackpad-friendly UI, which is a defining characteristic of the latter.
rkagerer 2y ago
I skimmed, so maybe I missed it: Is there anything in there about OnShape? Could be a particularly interesting follow-on to the section about Solidworks and Jon Hirschtick.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  No, that is too recent a development. The book was published in 2008 and the PDF I'm reading doesn't seem to have been updated. Rather a shame it wound up at a commercial site rather than say https://www.wikibooks.org/ https://www.wikibooks.org/

160 points by nill0 2y ago

I'll have to work through the 650 pages. I use CATIA v5 every day, first released in 1998. It's sharp and crusty and huge, but does everything (with the right license).

smartis2812 2y ago
Me too. But I really looking forward to it.
nraynaud 2y ago
Funny, I'm French, and I know people who developed a bit of it.
- buildsjets 2y ago
  If you really push CATIA hard, you can get it to crash in French, or at least crash with a poorly translated error message. "The Document cannot be unloaded because he is dirty" was one of my favorites.
  - satiric 2y ago
    I like the "Click OK to terminate" error. As though it wants to make sure it has my permission to crash.
    - WillAdams 2y ago
      Yeah, the whole button for user to click "Okay" for something which is abjectly _not_ acceptable has _got_ to go away. Please replace it with "Understood" or "Acknowledged".
      - guenthert 2y ago
        Or the not too uncommon "dismiss".
        buildsjets 2y ago
        I keep a PowerPoint with screenshots of bizarre CATIA/ENOVIA error messages. It's up to 8 slides now, completely covered with errors. A few other highlights: "As it was too important, the number of workspaces has been reduced." "Primitive Value is not an AggrInstance" "Instead of directly transforming an import, we recommend you apply the Add Position contextual command onto the solid. Then the required GSD transformation must be applied to the axis system of the Positioning Set. Do you want to go on with the transformation or quit the command and follow our recommendation? (Yes/No buttons)" "A problem occurs during Process." "Error: Error Stack is empty." an empty dialog box with options of "OK" or "Cancel." "An error condition has been detected, but no error information." While performing a Surface to Surface analysis: Status: 104% complete, 1193hr 2min 46sec remaining. "Cannot bitblt" "Technological Package found use appropriate engine to handle it. It can not be saved as a File."
buildsjets 2y ago
Crusty it is. The fillet tool STILL totally sucks after 27 years, and I STILL frequently find myself needing to define surface geometry, fillet the surface, and use that to split the solid rather than just directly filleting the solid, in order to get the same type of fillet intersections that you get when you machine the part.

rdtsc 2y ago

> Lemon felt strongly that timesharing systems were the wave of the future and that SDRC should focus on providing software on these systems rather than license its software for a one-time fee. Initially, the company sold ANSYS and NASTRAN on a timesharing basis using computers operated by U. S. Steel. SDRC did SaaS in the 1970s, before SaaS was cool. > In September 1994 the company announced that it would be restating its revenues and earning for 1992 through the first half of 1994 to include a $30 million charge relating to sales discrepancies in its Asian operations [...] The company immediately terminated Tony Tolani, a vice president and general manager of SDRC’s Far Eastern Operations. I was going to say they cooked the books before it was cool, too, but that's a much older trick. They claimed they sold all this software while in reality they just dumped it in some warehouse at the Cincinnati airport. Then proceeded to sell their shares before shit hit fan. SEC link with more details: https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/litreleases/lr15325.txt https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/litreleases/lr15325.txt That is to say the downright corrupt and shady sales and management team almost killed the company. It recovered eventually and ended up being bought by EDS > While the software’s geometric modeling capabilities were improved it was the package’s user interface that really impressed me. Icon menus typically were only two levels deep compared to five and six levels in other systems [...] I wrote in the April 1995 issue of EAReport: “I-DEAS has the best interactive user interface available today for mechanical design and analysis. I agree. Its interface would look odd and clunky by today's metrics and might even been considered unusual at that time, but it was really nice to use after some practice. They seemingly put some effort into its design.

branko_d 2y ago
I remember working with SDRC I-DEAS API in the early 2000s - it was well documented and "clean looking" compared to something like PTC's Pro/TOOLKIT. Interestingly, it was also CORBA-based, and it worked quite well over LAN.
- rdtsc 2y ago
  I worked on I-DEAS briefly, on the FEM part, but not the UI, so never got the chance to talk to the UI team. It was a wild time. Windows NT was taking the CAD/CAE world by storm, especially with much cheaper graphics cards available. We still supported SGI, AIX, HP, Sun, but the writing was on the wall already, and there was a break-neck pace to port everything to Windows.

ofrzeta 2y ago

I recently learned that there is a free community edition of Solid Edge: https://resources.sw.siemens.com/en-US/download-solid-edge-community-edition/ https://resources.sw.siemens.com/en-US/download-solid-edge-c... According to the History of CAD Solid Edge originally came from Intergraph. Many packages/kernels seem to have changed hands over the course of decades.

rurban 2y ago

Good counter on John Walker's "The Autodesk File" https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/

delhanty 2y ago

Seeing as David Weisberg's "History of CAD" is trending today I submitted "History of Unigraphics" by 3 of the original Unigraphics 7 dwarfs. Edit: Unigraphics X SDRC became the system we know today as Siemens NX It came out at the end of 2024 - these guys must all be around 80 by now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43169194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43169194

vincnetas 2y ago

tangential : I still can't get over the idea that shapr3d license is subscription only. You cannot buy the software. This means that your whole work/workflows ceases to exist if you not continuing to pay. No fallback option.

WillAdams 2y ago
Unfortunately, the printing industry rolled over for Adobe and set a precedent. An alternative to Shapr3D might be: https://www.plasticity.xyz/ https://www.plasticity.xyz/ which has an interesting license and licensing model (I bought a Studio license at launch, but haven't used it since). Fortunately, FreeCAD is markedly improved, and for folks who want something light-weight and intuitive, I would recommend trying: Dune 3D as discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958
- bsimpson 2y ago
  I just started using CAD last week, but as I understand: - Plasticity is so expensive because it uses one of the major kernels (SIEMENS Parasolid). Most of the licensing fee actually goes to them. You can find the Show HN post with a much cheaper price before he changed kernels. - There was a firm called Ondsel that was trying to improve the UX of FreeCAD by selling a fork. It recently folded. One of their employees is trying the same as AstoCAD. The idea is that you fund the development of FreeCAD, and you get the improved binaries before the work lands upstream.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    That is my understanding as well. Curious what CAD program (programs?) you are using and what sort of work you are doing and how you are approaching it.

nraynaud 2y ago

I don't seem to find a dead tree version of the book. I don't know how much work it entails, but maybe the profits of such a sale could go to the good cause they were advertising? Maybe it's the right opportunity to ask if you know a good online service for printing/assembling of big documents.

delhanty 2y ago
>Becoming a book publisher wasn’t on my bingo card when I started Shapr3D. Yet here we go! For now, it’s only available to select customers—but if there’s enough interest, we’ll make it accessible to the public. The book spans 860 pages and weighs approximately 3 kg—just as heavy as CAD is. Become a select customer of Shapr3D and their CEO István Csanády might send you one. https://twitter.com/istvan_csanady/status/1888298612167225663 https://twitter.com/istvan_csanady/status/188829861216722566...

amelius 2y ago

Is there an overview of which software is using what kernel?

nill0 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel "Kernel developers section"
- amelius 2y ago
  Thanks!
phkahler 2y ago
In the open source world there are 2 (maybe 3) geometry kernels that handle NURBS and can produce STEP files. Open Cascade, which is GPL now but had a commercial origin. It's quite good and is used in FreeCAD, Salome, KiCAD (EDA), Horizon EDA, Dune 3d, and probably several more. And then Solvespace which is the only user of it's own bespoke kernel which we are still trying to make more robust. This one is also limited to a certain subset of NURBS constructs but is still quite useful. Open Cascade may be the most difficult piece of FLOSS IP to recreate outside the Linux Kernel. In fact I'd say it'd be harder to replace given the number of people with interest and the background to work on these two different type of software.
- gorgoiler 2y ago
  Thank you so much for all the work you and your colleagues do to bring solvespace to the world. I believe it has the potential to be one of — and probably already is in — a class of super impactful, all time classic pieces of software alongside the likes of Firefox, Gimp, Inkscape, et al.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    Agreed, though I would put it in a more rarified category of "Opensource software which has innovated in terms of interface in a unique and meaningful fashion." --- other tools I put in this space are: - LyX - pyspread - ipe

WillAdams 2y ago

I've been reading through a PDF on my Kindle Scribe which I downloaded from the original site --- it's a great overview, and most importantly, includes citations and references to the various papers where folks shared their research/progress. These days of course, one would just get _The Essentials of CAGD_ and similar texts, or read: https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/ https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/ or watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds Highly recommended for anyone who wants an understanding of how modern CAD software came about. For my part, I have found it invaluable in working on my current project as described at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43159236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43159236

anoother 2y ago
A PDF of the submission? Would be grateful if you had a link; I can't seem to find one on the website.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  Is it up on archive.org? https://web.archive.org/web/20230325080337/https://www.cadhistory.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230325080337/https://www.cadhi... if not, drop me an e-mail at my username here @aol.com and I'll dig it out.
  - seemaze 2y ago
    found a PDF copy here: http://images.designworldonline.com.s3.amazonaws.com/CADhistory/85739614-The-Engineering-Design-Revolution-CAD-History.pdf http://images.designworldonline.com.s3.amazonaws.com/CADhist...

rjsw 2y ago

Spotted one typo, the reference to Hanchette in the section on Matra Datavision should be Hachette. That section could also mention that the Matra software is now opensource.

ghostly_s 2y ago
Why are you telling us?

scarygliders 2y ago

Hmmm, no mention of Teknicad? sadface I seem to be the only person (along with 3 others who were my cow-orkers) who ever used or heard of Teknicad , running on Tektronix Unix workstations and terminals :)

buildsjets 2y ago

One thing about this history is that it kind of light on the development of CAM, Computer Aided Manufacturing, which was co-developed along with CAD, and in some cases was actually a predecessor to CAD. I recommend "A Possible First Use of CAM/CAD" by Norman Sanders as a short history of CAM in the 1950s/1960s. https://inria.hal.science/hal-01526813 https://inria.hal.science/hal-01526813

WillAdams 2y ago
Excellent point, and interesting paper. Arguably though, CAM is a totally different subject, though as you point out, inextricably intertwined with CAD in their origin. Wasn't it a pretty straight-forward lineage of: G-code is developed, there are a couple of commercial apps which write to it, then when the EMC software is release and Mach3/LinuxCNC/Grbl become prevalent there was an explosion of different software options? Just not sure what one could say about that which would be interesting.

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

How does Shapr compare to FreeCAD?

WillAdams 2y ago
It uses a robust, commercial CAD kernel, and has an interface optimized for touch/stylus (originally it only ran on iPad Pro when an Apple Pencil was available). Similar programs to consider include Moment of Inspiration and Plasticity for commercial, and Dune 3D for opensource.

satiric 2y ago

Here's a neat paper about Boeing's use of CAD and CAM in the 50s and 60s. I particularly like the story about their first computer-made part drawings. There were no printers, and plotters were too inaccurate; but they had CNC mills and they realized "if you can cut in three dimensions, you can certainly scratch in two." So Boeing's first computer-made part drawings were engraved on sheets of aluminum. https://inria.hal.science/hal-01526813v1/document https://inria.hal.science/hal-01526813v1/document

endofreach 2y ago

Just wanted to say that i found out about shapr3d here on HN through a comment a while back. And– though it does sound dramtic– it changed my life. It got me into CAD modelling without any experience. Which i wouldn't have tried on a computer, but on my ipad, it was so easy and intuitive to get started. Since then i've designed so many things. From weird furniture ideas to replacement parts for my vacuum up to the mot important 3d models of a device-prototype. It's super fun, intuitive and i think in general the most expensive software subscription i pay for, also hands-down the software that impacted my life the most (as a consumer/user).

WillAdams 2y ago
Have you tried any other CAD programs? If you have access to a computer, could you try Dune 3D and write up a quick comparison? It seems the easiest-to-use of the opensource options.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Have you tried Shapr3d? The tablet UX is entirely different from any other CAD program. You are asking to compare apples to oranges.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    Yes, I did try it --- got part of the way through the tutorials and decided that the UI wasn't appealing enough to overcome the price/license.
- endofreach 2y ago
  Interesting, didn't know about dune3d. I can't try today though. What are you expecting from my comparison? If i don't forget, i can come back here in a few days if had time to try dune and tell you about my experience.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    I am just curious how Dune 3D "feels" to a person accustomed to Shapr3D --- the former is notable among opensource applications for having a touch/trackpad-friendly UI, which is a defining characteristic of the latter.

rkagerer 2y ago

I skimmed, so maybe I missed it: Is there anything in there about OnShape? Could be a particularly interesting follow-on to the section about Solidworks and Jon Hirschtick.

WillAdams 2y ago
No, that is too recent a development. The book was published in 2008 and the PDF I'm reading doesn't seem to have been updated. Rather a shame it wound up at a commercial site rather than say https://www.wikibooks.org/ https://www.wikibooks.org/