Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

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Dude, I was an EXPERT in Autocad from 1992 on....

I was the fastest ever to complete the ACAD design challenge (3 - hour test, finished it in 33 minutes)

I was the only person to have ever completed the autocad design interview test at the first architectural firm I worked at.... (8 minutes)

I came is second in the US CAD Olympics (only second because I skimmed the notes and it also required me to draw a bolt and I didnt notice that req in the directions)

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I love autodesk --- but I hate their arrogance. They have lightened up a bit with 360 and such....

But I am rooting for Blender.

The amount of amazing talent around the world that will blow shit up is immense.

We will see some guy from freaking thailand or something just come out with something unbelievable.

I was asked to design a rendering factory in asia for lucas film some years ago... (I was the designer for the Lucas Presidio Complex's Data Center) -- their comment was "US 3D designers are over-paid pre-madonnas and complain too much"

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So, I hope blender kicks some fucking ass and that we see some amazing shit come out from a completely unknown person as of yet.

Heh, the term is "prima donna".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_donna

Yes, but still pre-madonna was an amazing mix up, creativity wise :)

If you have been working in 3d modelling pre-Madonna you deserve to be a prima-donna and paid very well.

It sounds like a sophisticated real metaphor: Madonna about 40 years ago, before she became famous, whom I imagine as a very interesting character: more or less a prima donna, but without the excuse of being a celebrity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

> In linguistics, an eggcorn is an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker's dialect (sometimes called oronyms). The new phrase introduces a meaning that is different from the original but plausible in the same context, such as "old-timers' disease" for "Alzheimer's disease".[1] An eggcorn can be described as an intra-lingual phono-semantic matching, a matching in which the intended word and substitute are from the same language.

You’ll get a kick out of this then. Sort by top, all time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoneAppleTea/

> I love autodesk...

I sure don't. Buying up the competition and killing it off (see Softimage). I would migrate from a proprietary package to Blender just to make sure Autodesk can't get its paws on it and wreck havoc to my pipeline once again.

Oh holy fuck! I forgot abt softimage being killed by them

I went to mesmer animations labs school for softimage... (all still on SGI machines.

One of the best pieces of software ive used.

I was really good at building bodies on metaclay.

I built the entire human muscular system with meta clay, and was able to animate its movements in natural form. In 1995.

Sadly we had a tape backup system for all our data (these were all done on SGI machines) and after several years i lost that tape which hd all my projects on them.... i cant recall what format the backups were in.

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Also, whatever happened to Poser and Kai's Power Tools -- what are those groups upto these days?

Speaking of SGI, did you notice the sticker with SGI logo on Hiroyasu Kobayashi's photo in the article? I thought of it as a fun easter egg.

Hmm, but it's actually a spoof of the SGI logo. It's not one continuous line tracing the edges of a cube any more, it's several shapes in the same general arrangement as the original. And the text seems to say something like Animation Graphics or Innovation Graphics or Evangelion Graphics?

Good catch! I didn't check the logo well enough. I regard it as homage, not as trying to "appear as the real thing".

I love that you have also read Illuminatus!

Check ouy what I just bought at an art exhibit last week:

https://imgur.com/gallery/6pe0ccG

Not to mention Autodesk used to be proud of having their tools being used to destroy the environment [1].

https://twitter.com/JoanieLemercier/status/11102794489711329...

Reading the bit of that thread with the Autodesk CEO, I disagree with your assessment of their position. The CEO's response, in a nutshell, was that they aren't responsible for what people build with their software, but also that they provide free software for and support initiatives by green startups. He even said that Mr. Lemercier's passions was "appropriate and necessary"

What's more, Mr. Lemercier's asked that Autodesk no longer sell their software to dirty companies like the ones they were discussing. "Policing couldn't be easier...Don't accept their money."

Without even getting into the question of what Autodesk should or shouldn't do, I do think it's completely unfair to elide the difference between (declining Mr. Lemercier's idea) and (actively endorsing the environmental destruction found in Autodesk's downstream).

Contrast this with free software (eg blender which is gplv3) where the license grants users the freedom to use the software for any purpose, even purposes that the software authors do not approve of. So it seems silly to say autodesk is evil because of who they allow to use their software in a comment on an article about software which explicitly chooses to make no restrictions on their users.

In a different sense one could say that Autodesk is worse than Blender because its licensing model does allow the authors to make decisions on who might be allowed to use it.

A truly undervalued property of free software is that nobody can exert pressure on you for using it. Users can stay ideologically uncompromised.

Don't blame Autodesk. Blame Avid for selling it to them. Avid never quite understood how to position it in its' lineup, and sold it at 1/10th the price it paid 10 years prior.

Avid are world leaders in buying and ruining software suites. Looking through their lineup you see a sad list of software that either used to be good, or could have been great.

HAHA You know where AVID came from?

Lucas film!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EditDroid

AVID adapted the Edit Droid into their editing system...

Since we're having fun with eggcorns, the term is "wreak havoc."

360 is directly in response to open source pressure though, I imagine.

That tool forces use of their cloud, which they have said they inspect the contents of to verify claims of hobby (free) use.

It also uses dark patterns to hide exports to standardized formats.

I hope blender wins.

360 isn't in response to open source pressure. It's competing with Solidworks/Onshape,etc. but trying to capitalize on the hobbyist market that grew when 3D printing became viable. The only FOSS equivalent is FreeCAD, but that was not good enough when I tried it.

Hm I don’t know these other tools well but if the trend is FOOS is growing in 3D modeling, I don’t see why 360 couldn’t be seen as heading off that threat

The best open source 3d modeling tool is blender but its not a great solid modelling tool. Fusion 360 is a solid modelling CAD/CAM program aimed for 3d printing/milling. The open source scene there is pretty bad.

To echo LegitShady, FreeCAD is the only open source tool that even aspires to be anything like Fusion 360. Blender is essentially unusable for precise modeling since it doesn't have a constraints engine or a proper history. For example, you can't (easily) draw a 2D sketch of a rectangle with 5mm fillets, extrude that into a cuboid, drill a hole in it, then go back later and change the rectangle dimensions or the size of the fillets.

Wings3D I think is also used by the hobbyist 3D printing community because it's solid modeling, right?

Nice note; I hadn't heard of that program before.

However, that's also not the same type of program as Fusion 360. Fusion 360 is a parametric modeler, which means it's used for create precise mechanical designs, rather than artistic pieces or animated figures. For example, you might use Fusion 360 to design a adjustable desk or car part. Fusion 360 also has built in CAM features, which allow you to automatically generate commands for a CNC mill, lathe, or router.

Belatedly...

I'd love to hear your war stories. Glory years.

Some of us are still pissed that Autodesk tubed Generic CADD.

As for arrogance... You probably didn't work with Bentley Systems or their MicroStation. As a long time AutoCAD nerd, I made the switch for a gig (1993), because it's the work that matters, right?

Huge mistake.

As a kid, it was a cold shower introduction to the arrogance of the phenomenon of the willfully ignorant. I was invited to participate on their product steering committee. Big honor, right? Total waste. I don't think the Bentleys ever used, or watch someone use, their products for real work.

but blender isn't CAD, right? it's not a replacement for cad software (such as openSCAD, autodesk, etc...)

You can use it for CAD, but most traditional CAD users won't feel comfortable in an environment like blender which goes straight to 3D.

Traditional CADers work in 2D and "lift" or "project" the 2D work to 3D.

I sometimes go between Inkscape and Blender with that exact process. I could do it all in Blender, but I am used to Inkscape for 2d curve drawing.

You can use Blender for some CAD work... But it's not a solid modeler like solidworks/inventor. It doesn't have many of the precision and parametric tools.

Blender's internal representation of objects is vertices (defined with IEEE single precision floats) connected by lines, and faces --just the shell of the object, and no real curved surfaces (just more and more faceted to approximate curves, and smoothed normals to look curved.) It also does not have guaranteed precise measurements. Blender can do some parametric and Boolean operations and many of the same things, but sometimes it fails and the limitations get in the way.

Some have built CAD tools into Blender, but it's a hack on an artist's tool. For some types of CAD projects, it'll do great, particularly in some very creative directions, but I'd start with the other tools you mentioned.

I export Inventor models to Blender for better rendering and animation.

I think now you can define circles and extrusions parametrically. I'm sure I've seen videos of people adjusting circle radii and facet count and it adjusted the parameters and re-tesellated based on the new parameters. Visually you see the polygonal representation you asked for, but at least some things do seem to be parametric underneath if you define them in the proper way.

I also believe I read about parametric model definition being something they are working on more, since so many folks are asking for it. I do hope that comes to fruition. A free parametric modeler would be absolutely lovely.

Yes, there's some parametric things you can do in Blender. You can have a beizier curve that you can later change the facet count on... and you can use a spin modifier on a shape, but you're not going to get a perfect tangent line off a perfect circle like you can in a proper CAD tool for example. and you can boolean with another object, are you're not able to add a perfect fillet at that intersection.

In Blender, with care and if you're clever, you can do many of the same things you can with a CAD program... good enough for many cases. But Blender is still more of an artist tool than an engineer tool. For serious uses you're going to run into the limits.

There are free cad parametric modelers. FreeCAD is one.

Yes, there is FreeCAD. It crashes constantly and is very difficult to use. ..it doesn't really count, in my mind; if it isn't usable, it may as well not exist at all.

People don't use autocad for art, do they? I don't think Autodesk and Blender are really competitors. I could be wrong, though.

Autodesk also develop 3DS Max and Maya, both major players in the 3D animation world.

Yes, but the comment specifically mentioned Autocad.

Well, the commentor specifically wanted to make it about themselves regardless of what the context originally was.

I'm an EXPERT in internets and can confirm you are correct here ^

That’s true

Autodesk, the company, releases not only Autocad, but also 3Ds Max and Maya, two 3d packages which are arguably the most popular in industries like gamedev and 3d production.

> People don't use autocad for art, do they?

Why not? You could use anything, including AutoCAD, to do art. Wim Delvoye likes it, for instance:

https://bordercrossingsmag.com/article/vim-and-vigour-an-int...

I would consider the above link NSFW.

After scrolling through the first five or so images I assumed you work in a twelfth century monestary... and then I got to the x-ray.

A lot of anime have hyper-realistic buildings and backgrounds; I would expect that these would be built with the same CAD tools as real buildings.

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