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Comment by jakear | Hacker News Reader

I agree, SketchUp (and woodgears) was a big part of how I was able to pick up woodworking as a kid.

I don’t have much love for the product as it is now however. I would prefer the free SketchUp from 10 years ago to the current free tier (web app).

Does anyone know if any good open source SketchUp-like tools?

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https://www.openscad.org/ Its not SchetchUp no - but its an immensely powerful tool if you like building parameterized models. Combined with https://pypi.org/project/openpyscad/ you can program your next project in Python :-)

You write your project in you code editor of choice, auto-run on save, and set the OpenSCAD viewer to ato-load on file changes. So you have the immediate feedback of a 'visual' tool, all text driven, git managed and you are probably already familiar with most of the tools.

Yea this approach is not for everyone I'm sure.

This is great! I've been messing around with OpenSCAD and a Clojure script that generates an ergonomic keyboard for 3D printing: https://github.com/ibnuda/dactyl-keyboard/tree/refaktor

The Clojure - OpenSCAD script is amazing but also extremely slow (and I'm no good with Clojure even after staring at it for hours).

The Python OpenSCAD link seems way faster and that suggested workflow is great!

Happy to read this. It'll save me many hours. Seeing code getting converted into 3D renderings that you can actually 3D print (or woodwork) into real life is super cool.

If you want this, just go straight to FreeCAD and invest the time to learn it. It includes an OpenSCAD module but the interactive shape editing beats OpenSCAD for nearly everything (it's faster and more interactive).

I very much doubt a GUI interface is going to be faster than a text interface, in fact it will be the opposite. And then I'm wired to this one interface and have to poke around on lines with a mouse like its 1992. No thanks.

Also I can't easily compose or build composite objects, where is a one-line loop in Python. And how do I deal with libraries of components ? Dunno, seems like a step back to me.

Have not tried it though - perhaps you are right.

I think you should do a little more reading, first. In particular, GUI design of 3D structures is almost always "Faster" than text-based, for multiple reasons. What I meant was that FreeCAD renders the reuslts of complex operations faster (for exmaple I often have to wait many minutes just to render a basic CSG tree in OpenSCAD). More importantly, FreeCAD is just a GUI for a Python object model that permits simple construction of complex objects (probably not a single line). See https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Manual:A_gentle_introduction#Man... for more about the Python API.

What's nice is that since it's a true Python API, you have total control over everything, including iterating over named edges of the object, which openscad can't do at all.

I spend many hours a day poking at lines with a mouse, and it's really more productive than typing a few things, rendering to make sure the result is what you want, etc etc.

Oh yes. I think a sw dev looking at CAD will really like OpenSCAD. Atleast I did. The only things I found lacking was a measure tool and a cutlist generator. Sure, you can write the code with OpenSCAD to echo dimensions but having a measure tool can be really useful. No need to elaborate on cutlist.

And I put my plans in git too!

The best replacement for sketchup these days is OLD sketchup (version 8), from ten years ago. You can still get it. More on that at http://woodgears.ca/sketchup

FYI Mac version 8 can be found here: http://dl.trimble.com/sketchup/gsu8/FM-3-0-16845-EN.dmg

Can you add it to your page? I found it via https://jayscustomcreations.com/sketchup/, which has a dropbox url that includes the magic string "FM-3-0-16845-EN.dmg". That's all I needed to make the Mac URL from your Windows URL.

Thanks for pointing that out. Just added the Mac URL

I’ve been really curious about whether there’s a Sketchup-like application that has simple digital woodworking tools.

Bring in a couple 4x8 sheets, cut taking blade width in to consideration, join, test whether the edges are flush, etc.

Maybe even import plans, then give you a cut list that maximizes the wood you want to use. (Will I need 6x or 7x 8’shelving pieces? Ok, 7, but oh right, it’s reminding me to get and extra one to allow for mistakes.)

https://www.google.com/search?q=cutlist

Have never used any of these, but they've all come up on various woodworking forums I've read over the years.

Not exactly what you asked for but there are a few tools that take an SVG of shapes and outputs an SVG with the shapes packed more efficiently, including space for kerf, etc. svgnest and deepnest.io.

This doesn't do exactly what you're asking for, but I've had good success with Cut List Optimizer [0]. You still have to tally up the list of each board you need in your project, but it will tell you the most efficient way to cut your materials.

[0] https://www.cutlistoptimizer.com/

Solvespace is a FLOSS CAD program you may be interested in. There hasn't been a release in a while, but development has been steady on github.

I recently needed a tool like this ... and sadly concluded that there's no clear winner in the free software world.

Sketch-up's non-Linux presence is a pain, but can be worked around - the web version's useless for me, but again you can download the last .exe version they released still, from the official page (albeit they've hidden it).

FreeCAD and LibreCAD are worth diving into just because they're going to be around for a while, and at least one of them seems to be well supported.

Blender's another option, and though it doesn't align feature-wise quite as well, and has a steeper learning curve - learning it is going to be useful forever, and for a wider range of use cases.

Are you me? They really shit the bed with the way they've steered the product. When I think about Sketchup these days, it's more, "What shall I learn next to replace it?". Man it has served me well, it's a real shame. I'm thinking Blender. It's considerably more complicated, but the things you can do with it are considerably more expansive.

Fusion 360 is a good option. CAD and CAM in one package. It is more complex than SketchUp but still accessible to someone that is not a drafter.

Fusion / Solidworks always feels so clumsy to me when trying to design a woodworking project like a table or something. It works, but it somehow feels like the wrong tool for the job.

Maybe it’s better for more complex woodworking projects that aren’t just composed of simple rectangles. It’s certainly great for mechanical design and other use cases with smaller, more complicated geometry.

As someone who has made a couple woodworking designs in sketchup, but knows nothing more, I'm curious as to what the more expansive things you can do in Blender are. I fully believe sketchup has some limitations, but I haven't hit them yet in my basic designs.

Care to elaborate?

Not the parent, but if Sketchup is like a simple hand saw, Blender is a massive workshop filled with a whole array of advanced power tools [0]. For example you could go from a blank screen to creating, rigging and texturing a 3D character to a photo-realistic movie featuring the character, targeted at different display devices.

[0] https://www.blender.org/features/

Someone mentioned Blender now has Sketchup-like facilities. Haven't yet tried it.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+vs+sket...

so much this, I was always able to draw simple projects in minutes. I tried fusion360 for a few minutes and figured that I would need to invest some serious time to get productive with it. I settled for the limited web version of sketchup, but it is a step back from the desktop sketchup of a decade or so ago. In some way it's kind of a relief that it's not me, there really isn't a proper alternative to sketchup of yore. Anyone looking for a startup idea here?

I'm still using the last free Sketchup, with some ancient plugins that only work with that version :(.

Of all of Google's completely selfish moves in terms of turning their backs on viable products, selling off Sketchup seems to be pretty high on the list of worst offenders.

The open source tools I’ve seen aren’t great unfortunately. An alternative to sketchup is Fusion 360. Autodesk has a free hobbyist license.

FreeCAD is cool but very ugly both in terms of aesthetics and UX.

IMO Fusion 360 is way uglier in how often it crashes (and how slow it is) compared to FreeCAD.

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