Electronics > PCB/EDA/CAD

FreeCAD - is it just me, or bug city?

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Oleander:
Please look at VariCAD. It is not free nor opensource, the price is several hundred of euros.  Well designed - using it is nice. Linux and Windows versions are available.

janoc:

--- Quote from: Oleander on April 17, 2020, 12:43:31 pm ---Please look at VariCAD. It is not free nor opensource, the price is several hundred of euros.  Well designed - using it is nice. Linux and Windows versions are available.

--- End quote ---

But that isn't what he asked for, right? Because if we start talking about commercial solutions, there are many far less obscure and more advanced options, some even free (as in beer) for personal use - Fusion360, OnShape, DesignSpark, ...

Gyro:

--- Quote from: janoc on April 15, 2020, 08:46:19 pm ---And a few obscure things that are more of interest for niche uses:
...
- http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/
...

--- End quote ---

It may be obscure and niche, but from the video, Antimony looks really neat. Thanks for the link.


Edit: Damn, it's only Mac and Linux.  :(

janoc:
If you like that, look at OpenSCAD. That's the same idea just without the messing with the graph GUI, which gets unmanageable pretty fast for anything complex.

Just_another_Dave:

--- Quote from: janoc on April 15, 2020, 08:46:19 pm ---
--- Quote from: 0db on April 14, 2020, 05:13:45 pm ---is there any opensource alternative to FreeCad?

--- End quote ---

Well, FreeCAD is open source. If you mean another CAD that is also open source, then not really, I am afraid. CAD is a very niche field requiring fairly high math skills so not many programmers are willing or able to work on it. It is also not very sexy work, unlike reinventing a Javascript UI framework for the umpteenth time ...

There are a few open source tools that may or may not do the job but none is as complete as FreeCAD:

- https://www.openscad.org/
- http://solvespace.com/index.pl
- https://librecad.org/ (this one is excellent but only 2D drafting, originally a fork of commercial QCad)

And a few obscure things that are more of interest for niche uses:
- http://implicitcad.org/
- http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/
- https://brlcad.org/

There is also Blender (blender.org), but that is not really a CAD, more a mesh modeling program for 3D graphics.

--- End quote ---

I normally use Salome platform for designing 3d parts at home (https://www.salome-platform.org/), as I find it to be the most similar to the CAD software I use at work. Unluckily, it does not include any module for making mechanical plans, so I have to use QCAD for that purpose, but it has a good integration with open source and commercial FEA simulators.

Solvespace 3 also looks great, but I haven’t tried it yet. However, I need to check if this version has a single window mode, as using multi-window programs in windows annoys me a little bit (toolboxes tend to end up being always below the main window)

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