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Comment by theHIDninja | Hacker News Reader

I am an engineer. I do Arduino programming on the side. In my experience every attempt at a code-based CAD system has been totally useless. At every step of designing something, it feels like the scripting language is actively working against anything and everything I try to do with it. Everything feels as though it takes about ten times as long as it should. So far I've tried OpenSCAD and JSCAD.

I pirated SolidWorks last week and it is an absolute joy to use. It is like night and day compared to any scripting based CAD system out there.

CAD and code absolutely do not, and should not mix.

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CAD and code absolutely do not, and should not mix.

I tend to agree, having done both programming and mechanical design. Drawing by writing code is pounding a screw.

The major CAD systems have some scripting capability, for when you need to generate a gear or a geodesic dome or something that needs procedural generation. They also have constraint solvers, so you can specify constraints and let the system find a solution that satisfies them. Try the demo version of Fusion 360 for that.

I'm an embedded software engineer and into 3D printing useful/functional things. I've made a lot of cool complicated stuff with OpenSCAD. There's a lot of problems that are solved nicely in code. For example, I made a two stage 80:1 gear box for a force feedback steering wheel project, and I fully parameterized the gearbox geometry based on the tooth count, gear metric, and extrinsic mounting constraints. As a result, I could very easily try out different ratios and metrics across the whole assembly.

It's sometimes more painful to use code for quick "all I need is a funny shaped..." projects. Some projects really benefit from having a for loop, though.

Parametric CAD like solidworks does that too, but all you need is the relations between features, no boilerplate.

Honestly I feel like there are two types of project. The art type where you want a particular look or organic shapes and stuff like that and just hard mechanical parts that fit together. For the first code is a big no-no because you need to specify a lot of things you don't care about. But for mechanical parts that need to have specific sizes and tolerances code has been a godsend for me.

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