Hacker News Reader

Comment by solarman5000 | Hacker News Reader

I can't agree more with stallman. It pisses me off to no end that I was forced to learn autodesk in school, only to graduate and realizing nobody uses it in the real world. So why did my school pay to teach software nobody uses? Might as well used FreeCAD to teach the concepts.

I read this article a while ago, and made the decision to ban chromebooks in my house. I scored a couple cheap laptops, threw Ubuntu MATE on them, and told my kids to have fun, break it, fix it, do anything they want. I'm gonna raise admins, while the school raises ignorant complacent users

View on HN

Autodesk is most certainly used by a huge variety of businesses for a multitude of purposes. Is it the only solution? No. But the school also likely got the software at a steep discount or free, exposing you, as a student, to CAD software in general. What tools you use following that are up to you, but the school did its job in teaching you a general skill that can be applied in a variety of other programs at will.

>What tools you use following that are up to you

For most, they're up to your employer. If everyone I interview knows AutoCAD because they all learned AutoCAD in college, I'm probably going to purchase AutoCAD. Companies provide those steep discounts to students because they want to condition you, not because it's good PR. And it's such an effective strategy that you never even have to consider that other programs exist, let alone that they could be worth your time.

Last time I worked with CAD people, solidworks was making inroads on autoCAD. It's a slow change industry.

It doesn't matter if autodesk gave it away in my opinion. As a user, you are contributing to software just by using it and talking about it, by reporting bugs, etc. In one case, all that feedback goes into making the proprietary software better, and when you get older, you are more willing to pay huge sums for it (like what apple did). In the other case, you make software better that benefits everyone, not just those that can afford 4 digit licensing fees.

Considering that, I have to agree it is unethical in this case to teach proprietary software

Wait do you mean autocad by autodesk? It is literally the software 99% of engineering companies use. That being said I agree with you on using free CAD software to teach such stuff.

To say that close to 99% use it is plain false. Having done research on the topic while writing a report for my old company when we were switching CAD packages, I can safetly say that Fusion360 and Solidworks make up an overwhelmingly majority of the market share. Some others include CATIA (used almost exclusively in the Aerospace sector), NX, BobCAD, Vectric Aspire, and Rhino3D. That's not to say AutoCAD (Autodesk are the company that makes the software afaik) isn't used; it's just dishonstest to imply that learning AutoCAD is all you need.

In my experience, solid works is the clear winner. I haven't had to use an autodesk product professionally until recently, and even then I'm working on transitioning to FreeCAD because it is more powerful than autocad (I can design something and write g-code in the same program to make it)

Autocad is such a shit product, I have to think the only reason it still exists is because engineers are stubborn and just stick with what they know. Autodesk knows this, which is why they are more than willing to give it away to schools.

Autodesk gives nearly all their products away to schools including Maya, Inventor and Revit. I do agree with the rest of your comment, in a roundabout way- the individuals who are willing to leave industry to become teachers have knowledge that is a decade or so behind usually.

This is still good, learning AutoCAD is better than learning no CAD for future engineers imo.

Fusion360 is Autodesk. Revit is Autodesk. Autodesk absolutely has a substantial portion of the marketshare, specific product not withstanding.

Youre going to see Fusion360 and Solidworks in fabrication, but people aren't designing building models in Solidworks.

In the context of free vs proprietary software, schools are not going to avoid Autodesk products, or they would be outputting people who arent familiar with the industry standard tools. In a collaborative environment, when firms are sharing drawings, standardization of product is going to arise. Even if AutoCAD isnt the best product, it is entrenched for a while longer, and more than likely Autodesk owns the replacement firms will choose when the time comes. Schools will adapt accordingly.

Architecture is but a small corner in the world of engineering and applications for CAD.

While it is true that you can't avoid autodesk completely, you can no problem until at least second year in college. There is zero reason a high school can't avoid autodesk, and as educators they should.

> I'm gonna raise admins, while the school raises ignorant complacent users

This was my favourite comment here. And it captures the participatory essence of the Stallman article. But nowhere on this page of comments did I see the concept of "digital literacy" mentioned - and how schools that do not bring at least a critical discussion to their choice of OS/SaaS/PaaS etc are failing and behind the times. If this discussion is not happening in schools, where is it going to happen?

Lots of mention on this page went to how much/whether programming knowledge is needed for the free/open software. To this discussion, and to return to the comment at the incipit, even the smallest offering of access to coding can - through experience (to get all John Deweyean here) - transform students from users into makers. A very basic example would be the difference between the Google Classroom UI and a wiki interface (PM wiki, Doku wiki) which by default puts more emphasis on the student and their collaborative role.

And Dewey noted (Problems of Men, 1946, p.61) that it is society's loss if the educational system is not providing ample opportunity for students to discover their voice and where their talent lies. In conclusion, the passivity involved in using certain apps further blocks the potential for interdisciplinary exploration, in at least one or two class components. But here I am giving a poor man's rendition of Engelbart's vision.

I agree with your philosophy, but I'm interested in why specifically Chromebooks are banned (and did you only ban chromebooks or did you ban everything that isn't free?). Especially with the newest chromebooks, it's cake to install anything in the Debian repos. It's also worth noting that the vast majority of ChromeOS is also open source.

I'm more curious because I banned Windows and Apple (at least if I'm paying for it), but I let the Chromebooks stay. My son has learned a lot about Linux and life on the CLI getting Minecraft to run in the Debian container on our Chromebook.

Stallman's TED talk had a profound impact on me. I think he is right, but realistically, it would be extremely difficult to take it to the extreme that he suggests. The best I can do is eliminate what I can and keep learning so I can do more. I've only been a full time Linux user for 3 years, but in that time I've learned how powerful it is, and can't help but think, if I started on this two decades ago, I'd be even more powerful in the real world than I already am.

I recognize all the contributions Google has made, and overall I think they are a lot better than other companies, but at the end of the day they are a company and their end goal is making money and not always what is best for my kids and society in general. I tried wiping chromeOS and putting Linux on, but the whole container thing annoyed me and reminded me of the PS3.. At any minute, Google can kill this functionality. So I opted to drop it completely in favor of old thinkpads and ubuntu.

If your kids like Minecraft, I cannot suggest enough the "learning Python with minecraft" book and optionally the Udemy course for teaching kids python. In 3 months, both my 8 and 10 year old are building skyscrapers with a few lines of code. It has been a huge creative outlet for them. Bonus if you have them do it on a raspberry pi

> If your kids like Minecraft, I cannot suggest enough the "learning Python with minecraft" book and optionally the Udemy course for teaching kids python

Thank you, I will check it out! I just retired and older Pi from production that would be perfect for this actually...

CAD is a bad place to make this argument. FreeCAD is the closest thing to commercial 3D parametric CAD, and it is still missing some key features. Further, teaching FreeCAD to engineering students would be a detrimental; the engineering profession that students graduate into has no appetite for open source CAD

I'm talking about what to teach in school. FreeCAD does a lot, and it has gotten a LOT better recently. You could do things in FreeCAD that would cost thousands in other packages. For most of school, this is enough. When it comes time for CFD and FEA, there are tools better than FreeCAD, but not for long if FreeCAD had the user base the other tools get from schools

Does FreeCAD handle constrained assemblies yet? You can't kneecap students while making the argument that their participation will make the tool better for someone else, maybe, in the future.

Yes, it does, admittedly not as smooth as solidworks. FreeCAD has come a LONG way recently. With more users, it will just get better and better.

Suppose it doesn't though, I don't agree that it is knee capping students. My school started teaching CAD in 10th grade, and at that point you are just learning the basics like GD&T, so it isnt that important if the CAD package can make 1000 part assemblies and sub assemblies. You can teach all the basics with FreeCAD, no problem

All the assembly workbenches are external, doesn't count in my mind.

You're right, FreeCAD can handle the basics nicely. I was coming at this with my experience from university, where I don't think FreeCAD is good enough yet.

I want FreeCAD to be better; I financially support the development in a small way.

It pisses me off to no end that I was forced to learn autodesk in school, only to graduate and realizing nobody uses it in the real world. So why did my school pay to teach software nobody uses? Might as well used FreeCAD to teach the concepts.

How is this relevant? Yes, your school should teach you the software that will be useful to you outside academia.

If anything, this idea seems counter to Stallman's has hard line stance.

Re: which CAD to use...

I work in a +1$B company in AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) and our designers and engineers use AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, 3DSMax, KeyShot, Unity, Solidworks, Rhino, SketchUp, plus the entire Adobe Suite. The Autodesk tools represent probably 75% of the install base.

I agree that learning the concepts is more important on where and what to click in any particular software set. But in AEC, Autodesk is king.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com