5 ms·

Surprised this hasn't been shared here before. Built by my former colleague, Stewart Allen (Co-Founder/CTO of WebMethods, CTO of AddThis, Co-Founder/CPO of Ion

Surprised this hasn't been shared here before. Built by my former colleague, Stewart Allen (Co-Founder/CTO of WebMethods, CTO of AddThis, Co-Founder/CPO of IonQ, et al.). What caught my attention: - 100% free, no subscriptions, no accounts, no cloud - Local-first: all slicing and toolpath generation runs on your machine - Works in any browser, even offline once loaded - Supports FDM/SLA, CNC milling, laser cutting, wire EDM - Fully open source: github.com/GridSpace/grid-apps Refreshing to see a tool that isn't trying to lock you into a subscription or harvest your data.

downrightmike 9mo ago
Any circuit designers? looking to hobby, but what I saw was all proprietary
- daemonologist 9mo ago
  You mean like PCBs? KiCad is pretty popular.
  - s0a 9mo ago
    second KiCad. just had my first board printed a few months back. its an esp32 stackable daughterboard. first time doing anything like that outside of breadboarding, and it worked great.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - iamflimflam1 9mo ago
      Creating PCBs is surprisingly straightforward and there are a ton of good resources available. It’s probably one of the few area of YouTube that is actually still useful. Probably a high enough barrier to entry to stop most slop.
  - IshKebab 9mo ago
    KiCAD has pretty awful UX though. I've tried all of the FOSS PCB design apps except LibrePCB (on my to-do list) and Horizon EDA is definitely the one I'd recommend (even though it also has a fair amount of UX oddities it's much better than KiCAD). DesignSpark PCB is also decent - only minor UX mistakes like warping the mouse when you zoom.
    - contingencies 9mo ago
      KiCAD has pretty awful UX though It's not perfect but it's pretty damn good these days. By EE standards it's positively awesome. Single platform vendor toolchain hell is why people leave commercial software and move to KiCad, which runs everywhere, is open source, and has a plugin architecture plus mostly every feature you could ever need except high end simulation (which just needs time).
      - amelius 9mo ago
        Has anyone tried EasyEDA? I hear people raving about it, but I don't know if it's because of the tight integration with LCSC, the availability of symbols and footprints, or if it's really that good.
        contingencies 9mo ago
        EasyEDA is basically a single-supply-chain web-SaaS alternative to open source multi-platform KiCad. Not a smart thing to invest time in. Furthermore, its design library is of worse than dubious quality. The vast majority of shared designs are probably non-functional to dangerous.
        amelius 9mo ago
        Ok, but it is easy to drag and drop components from lcsc. Sounds like an enormous time saver. But you're probably right about the lock-in. Anyway, I'm waiting for AI that is smart enough to read a datasheet and convert it to a KiCad symbol and footprint. Should be around the corner.
wolvoleo 9mo ago
Can it be locally installed in docker or something? It's kinda a bummer when I need to do something and there's a connection problem or the server is down. Edit: looks like yes! https://github.com/GridSpace/grid-apps https://github.com/GridSpace/grid-apps I will try it then. In fact I had that only a month or 2 ago with fusion 360. Something in their cloud was down so I couldn't export to STL and i really needed that urgently.
WillAdams 9mo ago
(ob. discl., I work for a company which sells software in this space) I wrote up a bit on Carbide Create at: - https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/2d-drawing https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/2d-drawing (note that there is a link to a free (as in beer) download for Windows or Mac OS at that link) - https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/toolpaths https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/toolpaths Other commercial programs which one licenses and installs and which don't intrude beyond that include: - MeshCAM https://www.grzsoftware.com/ https://www.grzsoftware.com/ - Alibre https://www.alibre.com/ https://www.alibre.com/ (note that there is a CAM option which is a re-badged MeshCAM) - Moment of Inspiration 3D https://moi3d.com/ https://moi3d.com/ (this is probably the next commercial package I try) and of course FreeCAD has a CAM Workbench which has seen great strides and Solvespace has a basic facility for G-code generation and some folks just program G-code/CAM directly --- I've been working on a tool for that myself: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

downrightmike 9mo ago

Any circuit designers? looking to hobby, but what I saw was all proprietary

daemonologist 9mo ago
You mean like PCBs? KiCad is pretty popular.
- s0a 9mo ago
  second KiCad. just had my first board printed a few months back. its an esp32 stackable daughterboard. first time doing anything like that outside of breadboarding, and it worked great.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - iamflimflam1 9mo ago
    Creating PCBs is surprisingly straightforward and there are a ton of good resources available. It’s probably one of the few area of YouTube that is actually still useful. Probably a high enough barrier to entry to stop most slop.
- IshKebab 9mo ago
  KiCAD has pretty awful UX though. I've tried all of the FOSS PCB design apps except LibrePCB (on my to-do list) and Horizon EDA is definitely the one I'd recommend (even though it also has a fair amount of UX oddities it's much better than KiCAD). DesignSpark PCB is also decent - only minor UX mistakes like warping the mouse when you zoom.
  - contingencies 9mo ago
    KiCAD has pretty awful UX though It's not perfect but it's pretty damn good these days. By EE standards it's positively awesome. Single platform vendor toolchain hell is why people leave commercial software and move to KiCad, which runs everywhere, is open source, and has a plugin architecture plus mostly every feature you could ever need except high end simulation (which just needs time).
    - amelius 9mo ago
      Has anyone tried EasyEDA? I hear people raving about it, but I don't know if it's because of the tight integration with LCSC, the availability of symbols and footprints, or if it's really that good.
      - contingencies 9mo ago
        EasyEDA is basically a single-supply-chain web-SaaS alternative to open source multi-platform KiCad. Not a smart thing to invest time in. Furthermore, its design library is of worse than dubious quality. The vast majority of shared designs are probably non-functional to dangerous.
        amelius 9mo ago
        Ok, but it is easy to drag and drop components from lcsc. Sounds like an enormous time saver. But you're probably right about the lock-in. Anyway, I'm waiting for AI that is smart enough to read a datasheet and convert it to a KiCad symbol and footprint. Should be around the corner.

wolvoleo 9mo ago

Can it be locally installed in docker or something? It's kinda a bummer when I need to do something and there's a connection problem or the server is down. Edit: looks like yes! https://github.com/GridSpace/grid-apps https://github.com/GridSpace/grid-apps I will try it then. In fact I had that only a month or 2 ago with fusion 360. Something in their cloud was down so I couldn't export to STL and i really needed that urgently.

WillAdams 9mo ago

(ob. discl., I work for a company which sells software in this space) I wrote up a bit on Carbide Create at: - https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/2d-drawing https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/2d-drawing (note that there is a link to a free (as in beer) download for Windows or Mac OS at that link) - https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/toolpaths https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/toolpaths Other commercial programs which one licenses and installs and which don't intrude beyond that include: - MeshCAM https://www.grzsoftware.com/ https://www.grzsoftware.com/ - Alibre https://www.alibre.com/ https://www.alibre.com/ (note that there is a CAM option which is a re-badged MeshCAM) - Moment of Inspiration 3D https://moi3d.com/ https://moi3d.com/ (this is probably the next commercial package I try) and of course FreeCAD has a CAM Workbench which has seen great strides and Solvespace has a basic facility for G-code generation and some folks just program G-code/CAM directly --- I've been working on a tool for that myself: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview