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Comment by ramboldio | Hacker News Reader

same itch here.

Here are two quite remarkable statements from a MIT lecture on CAD (https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/fa19/6.807/courseMaterial... ):

"[there are] ASIC and Parasolid, others are not really as good"

and "[CAD] Research disconnected from reality [compared to CG research]"

One might expect a whole range of CAD kernels floating around, since these kernels are such a fundamental part of civilization in some way. Doesn't seem to be the case, tho..

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That confirms the impression I had, I guess they are just so complex that building a new open source one from scratch would be Herculean effort. Guess OCCT is the only option for now.

The itch I would love to scratch is an online real-time collaborative parametric cad app using CRDTs. Current thinking is combining OpenCascade compiled to WASM [0] with Yjs[1], but frankly don’t have the time.

A kind of Figma but for 3D cad. (There is obviously onShape but I’m thinking something a little simpler)

0: https://github.com/donalffons/opencascade.js/

1: https://github.com/yjs/yjs

Doing just this. Starting with BIM/IFCjs but have near-term plans for integrating a STEP-compatible engine soon.

Thanks for the opencascade/wasm link.. looks like a nice option!

github.com/buildrs/Share

"building a new open source one from scratch would be Herculean effort."

how are you tackling this?

Agree it's a big effort, so approaching as open as we can to attract cooperation. We also have a new company that has taken seed funding. I'm a systems engineer/data scientist, working with architects and 3d folks who know the state of the art well.

The architecture will tend towards platform + apps, to help address the scale problem. We're looking to partner/port the geometry kernel and focus on workflow and integration with open standards (IFC,STEP,gltf,Collada).

Initial UI is in react+three.js (soon react-three-fiber) with git for file-based versioning underneath. Also interested in recent discussions on HN about CRDTs on Matrix for collaboration. So kind of a CRDT real-time google docs capability on top of a persistent file based rep on git. This part is very fun coding :)

Just getting started! Appreciate any feedback, esp on our github/discord :)

that sounds very exciting! I also think that a physics / game engine environment would make CAD a lot more accessible. Right now, these two world are very distinct from each other..

I use Blender for simple 3D printing stuff. There have been a few times where I found the bottom of something by simply turning on gravity.

I do hope that Blender becomes more capable in this regard though.

they have very different goals. game engines and such make all sorts of performance compromises you positively wouldnt want your CAD software making.

What about CGM?

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