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Comment by halotrope | Hacker News Reader

User hostile describes the whole Autodesk suite really well. To bad that the CAD offerings like FreeCad are still a bit hard to use.

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Because none of the developers had ever been users, had any experience drafting.

AutoCAD was basically a UI for a pen plotter.

One notable exception was Duff Kurland. He liked hanging out with us users and would chat us up. He'd get our bugs fixed. We loved him.

Generic CADD was pretty good, much loved. So Autodesk had to kill it, natch.

Only Bentley's MicroStation was more user hostile.

Later, an intern at Bentley created an amazing auto snapping & aligning input tool. Especially for isometric drawings. I don't know came of it.

User interface researchers like Suresh Bhanavi did some really good work. He was hired by Army Corp of Engineers to determine why CAD work had poor quality and ROI (often negative), compared to just using drafting boards. He tried to advocate his findings. The CAD vendors weren't interested.

I doubt Autodesk or Bentley ever addressed their distain for users.

Gods, writing this now, I'm angrily remembering helping coworkers fix their SolidWorks and 3DS Max problems.

A few startups were more user and domain focused. ArchiCADD and Rhino come to mind.

Source: Was a CAD jockey in the 80s/90s. My "chaotic mutant user interface" critique (allegedly) got wide circulation within Autodesk. Briefly served on Bentley's steering committee; waste of time.

PS: Just looked at Autodesk's current product list. Wow. They're the Computer Associates / SoftBank of design software.

It's not just that FreeCAD is "a bit hard to use" it's that it has maybe 3% of the features available in the AutoCAD suite of tools. Plus there is the massive collection of third party industry specific tools the build on top of AutoCAD.

I disagree about the 3% of features. With plugins and the massive amount of extensibility possible in FreeCAD, I think it actually has most of the functionality of AutoCAD, let's say 80%, and a good number of features that AutoCAD is missing. However, discoverability of these features is abysmal (which is why most people think that they don't exist), and it can be VERY hard to use, depending on what you're trying to do.

I definitely couldn't replace Solidworks or Fusion360 with FreeCAD in terms of speed of use, especially if I was sitting down with all 3 for the first time.

> I think it actually has most of the functionality of AutoCAD, let's say 80%, and a good number

The problem is that everybody uses a different 80%.

That's why you shouldn't cut off the rest of the sentence!

"a good number of features that AutoCAD is missing"

Everyone needs a different bunch of features, and for some of them that would exclude AutoCAD.

Haha yes, I think this is the problem; it's part of the tradeoff between open and closed source, IMO.

For some cases. Linux and GCC, for example are often more feature-rich than their proprietary counterparts.

OK 3% is was probably harsh, but if you look across the whole AutoCAD suite at things like their MEP tools, AutoCAD Civil, AutoCAD Map 3D and so on you'll find whole domains of features that FreeCAD doesn't even begin to address.

This is true. However, there are very few roles which use ALL of these tools. They are almost completely different applications that just share a base rendering window; they lie in completely separate domains. With that in mind, yes, FreeCAD doesn't have those features, but they exist in other open source applications.

I think what you are really comparing at this point is FreeCAD, the application, to Autodesk, the brand.

My point was to highlight really how big and sprawling the AutoCAD ecosystem really is and how meaningless a statement like FreeCAD can compete with AutoCAD is without specifying both context and domain.

With that in mind, yes, FreeCAD doesn't have those features, but they exist in other open source applications.

I really wish that was true. It would make my life much better.

I think what you are really comparing at this point is FreeCAD, the application, to Autodesk, the brand.

I'm intentionally not. Because if I where I would also be talking about Navis, Infraworks, Revit, 3DS and so on.

And just to be clear I greatly dislike AutoCAD and if I never had to use it again it would no doubt improve my quality of life.

Solidworks is very easy to use but of course one has to have enough dosh as it is expensive

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