Hacker News Reader

> CAD program that was made specifically, and only for, hobbyists.

I see "hobbyists" as "prosumers", they want the same tools the professional use. Take a look at photography or wood working for example, people are spend thousands on professional level tools. I don't believe there is a market for hobbyist only cad software, that would be like making a camera that is only useful for hobbyist photographers. If it's good enough for a hobbyist it's good for a professional.

CAD for casual users, and true amateurs? Yes there is a market for that.

I would agree... but SketchUp is an example of how I think there is an audience for simpler tools.

SketchUp, most professional CAD modelers would think it is basically unusable. No constraints? No parametric modeling of any kind? No actual conception of solids (just faces and lines)? You just draw directly on the models without a 2D Sketch first, or dragging in a primitive? And yet... SketchUp is still really popular, within its own niche. It's not something you'd find anywhere on a "best CAD programs" list, but if you are an interior designer, or another field with simple 3D needs, odds are you'll find SketchUp everywhere.

So... it doesn't have to be a powerful CAD program to find an audience. It just has to be a tool that provides CAD to people who are in a very different field than CAD modelers.

Another example that I'm banging my head against: BobCAD-CAM. The 3D capabilities compared to most modelers are... pretty garbage. But if you are just trying to machine simple parts on a router, I will admit that if you don't stretch its capabilities, it is pretty fast and simple, and the integrated CAM is functional. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone over separate tools (a CAD designer would hate it, a professional CAM user would hate it, but someone who is neither might find it a good tool that at least gets the job done).

The problem is CAD is too broad a term here, and we are mostly sticking to "cad for designing physical stuff".

Sketchup is certainly used by professionals, it has a number of niches where it's super successful. Particularly architecture and interior design, it's well used for quickly visualising and translating plans. You would never you it for product design, as you said.

I think (maybe wrongly) most people in the thread will be thinking "3D Parametric Solid Modelling CAD for Product Design", such as SolidWorks or freeCad. Even if you build a "simple" app in that product category it will still have to tackle all the same hard problems in its kernel as a pro app. It maybe even needs to be more robust.

The two best modelers I've seen for that kind of casual solid modeling are Plasticity https://www.plasticity.xyz and Moment of Inspiration http://moi3d.com

Both are really focused on UX, and license a kernel

I have seen MOI before, but it wasn't quite my thing though maybe I'll revisit it.

Plasticity though is gorgeous, especially for a solo developer. Wow.

Previous plasticity discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30695360

> Plasticity really focused on UX, and license a kernel

Its good that author of Plasticity (@nkalen on HN) had finally switched[0] to use Parasolid (and abandoned previous plans to use Russian C3D kernel) after Russia started full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022[1]... in eight years since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.[2]

N.B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30696305

[1] https://twitter.com/nk/status/441096177933905920

[2] https://twitter.com/nk/status/1507672831559151620

If you're trying to design stuff for the real world, I think the closest thing you'll get to that is probably Fusion360- same engine as most other Autodesk stuff (I think) but easier to get started with, and your skills and habits can mostly move with you to bigger packages if you need to.

For other stuff like designing miniatures and stuff, I dunno, I don't do very much of that