Hacker News Reader

Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

How does this differ from freecad.org which appears to be much more mature and also uses OpenCascade under the hood?

FreeCAD is an intuitive UI nightmare. There are always 2-3 different tools that do the same but each with its own limitations. The error messages even in the error console are too cryptic. I have tried over and over to switch to FreeCAD from fusion but I have wasted too much time spending hours trying to figure stupid crap.

Other tools like KiCAD are so much better. Even Blender which can be very complex just works.

RealThunder's fork fixes so much. I almost wish they'd just scrap everything, clone his work, and start again from there.

Gonna go check this out ASAP, thanks.

It's really amazing. I'm a little worried that it's not going to last forever though, I'm not sure what the plan upstream is and how much is going to get merged, and it's literally just one person maintaining it as far as I can tell.

JFTR, FCStd-files produced by RealThunder's LinkStage[0] (fork of FreeCAD) is not fully backward compatible with an official FreeCAD app, and wise versa.

So, if you are planning to use LinkStage app for some large project, be ready to use only one app for the whole project and be ready to lost in whole or in part compatibility with the users of an official FreeCAD.

[0] https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD

after building and playing with this for a bit i have to say, at least in its current state, it is far less intuitive than FreeCAD.

He answers that question in the git hub read me:

"While FreeCAD technically does everything I need, the way it's implemented isn't quite to my liking. My biggest pain points with it are the modal sketcher that only works in 2D, no constraints in 3D for extrusions and the perils of referencing things in the design.

Solvespace on the other hand gets the workflow part right, but falls short by not importing STEP and the geometry kernel not supporting chamfers and fillets."

That are exactly my concerns also. Great that someone new (Lukas K. from Horizon EDA) stepped up!

3D constraints are really interesting. I can see a lot of potential.

But also, 2D Sketching is a nice easy "Stay in your comfort zone" model that keeps as much work as possible in 2D where it's easier to think about, and encourages 2.5D stuff that's easy to understand. For basic functional items it's nice. For other stuff... 3D constraints seem pretty interesting.

There doesnt seem to be another Open Source Paramectric CAD that has good UI. Not Freecad or Open SCAD.

There is DSLCAD (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34740463) which:

> DSLCAD is a programming language & interpreter for building 3D models.

> Inspired by OpenSCAD, it has a language and 3D viewer to simplify the modeling experience.

https://github.com/DSchroer/dslcad

SALOME is an OpenCascade frontend that nobody seems to know about, perhaps because it's pitched for CFD meshing. But it's basically a more focused and stable FreeCAD.

Unfortunately, SALOME uses CORBA.

Why is that bad?

Honestly, OpenSCAD has a great UI - it's everything else that sucks about it. OpenSCAD's core advantage is that if you can code, then it is so damn simple; cube sphere cylinder variables modules rotate translate (and if you want to be really fancy: hull union intersect difference), that's all you need for 99% of projects and it fights onto a half-page cheatsheet.

The problem with OpenSCAD is that it's fundamentally really dumb; it doesn't have constraints, you usually just create shapes additively but then you have awful Z-fighting because the engine sucks, and the solution is "just barf epsilons everywhere lol" (which is pure cope - that's not a solution, that's an awkward workaround that requires a bunch of pointless busywork (and more importantly, forces you to figure out stuff about your model that you legitimately don't care about) because the engine is incapable).

I would love to see a successor to OpenSCAD that keeps its IDE-style interface (and no, that doesn't mean using pycharm - the beauty of OpenSCAD is that you have a minimal functional DSL and the GUI is built around the DSL and its use-case) but finds an elegant method of integrating constraints, basically anything to do with curves, that sort of stuff.

I use OpenSCAD a lot, but am switching to Build123D because it's a lot more powerful and doesn't seem any harder.

No IDE though…

> I would love to see a successor to OpenSCAD

There is quite a few "code" CAD's around https://github.com/Irev-Dev/curated-code-cad. Cadquery has contraints but isn't really a DSL.

Openscad does have constraints, they just look different. It is an imperative ui so it has imperative constraints. Most cad programs have a declarative ui and declarative constraints.

However I have to admit, I too would love an imperative ui with declarative constraints. I have a hard time visualizing how that would work, but that is probably because I lack imagination.

Macad|3D is another OCCT-based 3D CAD, with a bit cleaner Ribbon-like UI.[0,1]

Here is my thread & discussion on Fosstodon.[2]

[0] https://macad3d.net/

[1] https://www.github.com/Macad3d/Macad3d

[2] https://fosstodon.org/@app4soft/110677137307234193

Reply on news.ycombinator.com