Is it any closer to functioning like Solidworks, NX, Creo, and all the other professional CAD software packages?
Edit: After opening it up it seems better than before but still not a replacement. I can use the draw tool to create a rectangle but than immediately cannot apply symmetry or equal length constraints until I delete others which shouldn't overlap. Clicking to create a cut or hole opens up a window that does not make it easy to create a new sketch from within or place something from within (but you can just make a sketch were you want something and then open them up and that they lock onto).
I've generally been a pretty harsh critic of FreeCAD because it represents the only entry in the market of linux CAD and it has frustrated me that it does not just do what is known to work. This seems usable. Still annoying, still not a replacement, but usable. So progress.
My impression of FreeCAD as a project is that for much if its life it has suffered from a certain amount of developer churn and lack of focus. It's like somebody builds a workbench and gets it working just good enough using a workflow that makes sense to them, but then nobody ever really bothers to flesh out the rest of it, so if you try to do things in a different way that may be perfectly sensible to you the result is a broken mess. Eventually somebody decides they can do better, and maybe they do, but the replacement still has a lot of rough spots that never get finished and the cycle starts again.
It seems like the development team has gotten much more organized in the last couple years, so I have a lot of hope for the future. I think that good open source parametric CAD is something the world really needs.
It's inherently limited by its geometry kernel. Most "real" CAD suites use something like parasolid, usually with a bunch of extras slapped on top. Making a new one from scratch is a massive undertaking, but I'll remain forever hopeful that we get a new, modern, open-source kernel one of these days...
I don't necessarily agree in this case - OCCT is more than capable for what FreeCAD is offering. Add to that the development trajectory of OCCT also seems to be really taking off recently (with the 8.0-RC, they've re-worked how all B-Spline algorithms work, with implications for all operations).
This isn't really true. The vast majority of problems are in the UI. The geometry kernel is limited, but it's good enough for an open source project. Compared to say OpenSCAD, Open CASCADE is leagues ahead.
The entire FreeCAD development philosophy is to not compare FreeCAD with commercial CAD tools. That's a cardinal sin. Basically, they are completely hostile to feedback from people who've spent their entire career doing CAD.
> Basically, they are completely hostile to feedback from people who've spent their entire career doing CAD.
There's an entire working group in the project comprised of people who have spent their entire career doing CAD and now take care of making FreeCAD get on par with proprietary counterparts.
There are numerous discussions online where users have constructive conversations with FreeCAD devs and provide useful input to mutual benefit.
Would you care to point me to a discussion where an actual FreeCAD contributor is completely hostile to someone like you?
That sounds fine except the part where private companies have cameras everywhere surveilling us, directly tied into dmv records to identify us, and then do whatever they want with that data. And not on a random store front or a persons front door but the major roads we all must use.
Even forgetting that, all this means is people that don't care about getting a ticket, either because they won't pay or it's a such a small amount to them that they don't care. just do what they want. Nothing is being "enforced", just taxed.
The idea that any of these companies have anything that represents ethics as they steal everyones data, fight against any regulation or accountability, all while they claim (or lie, depending on your view) they might make something that could endanger the human race as a whole, is laughable.
It's money and power with these people. Dig down and you'll find how this decision is motivated by one or both.
This is the opposite of security theater. It was an apparently an implementation of security with issues but restricting physical access, both for people and vehicles, is absolutely a real improvement to security.
Huh? The linked article is nothing more than "this guy is black, so therefore helping any underprivileged black people gain university admissions is bad"
It's outrageous racism. A conclusion about all minorities based on one person's math mistake, where the logic is entirely based on shared skin color.
If you replace the races and make it a conclusion about legacy admissions or something, it's obviously stupid and illogical, right?
"This white guy doesn't know Afghanistan from Kazakhstan. More proof legacy admissions is bad!"
There's a bunch of needlessly inflammatory bullshit in that article. "Innumerate woke Bolshevik" and making fun of someone because he thinks she looks like a Harry Potter character. This guy seems like nothing more than a high school bully. E-mailing someone asking them to respond is nothing more than a fig leaf.
> Anyone who signed that petition is not only my personal enemy, but the enemy of free speech, the enemy of the spirit of the academy, and the enemy of western civilization.
I wish they would just copy the gui format of Solidworks, Creo, NX, etc. Every time I open it to try and learn it, it frustrates the crap out of me and I close it until it's been long enough that I'm willing to try again.
I'm not sure of the situation for software engineers but ones on the aerospace and mechanical side working in aerospace in Europe are paid something on the order of 50% less than ones in the US. I always assumed it's just a supply demand problem but I haven't run the numbers.
If you want to go further into bringing other stuff in I would say, on average, the European folks are only slightly worse off money wise (owning a house there does seem harder overall) but with more security, time off, etc.
In the US there is a much broader range of experiences in the sector, partly because of personal circumstances (student and auto loans being the biggest) and alot because of where you live, as pay tends not to scale with COL. So someone could live like a king in rural Iowa or a pauper in Los Angeles doing the same job.
For Airbus, Boeing, and others the cost of failure is disproportionately high. Just look at how you consider Boeing despite that 99.99...% of their software and hardware work flawlessly. They will be known for the 737 Max failure for decades.
When OpenAI tells someone that suicide isn't that bad, some bs supplement could be the best thing to treat their cancer, or does anything else that has a negative outcome, the consequences are basically zero. That is even though any single failure like that probably kills alot more people per year than Boeing.
It seems there is knowledge of this and the lack of responsibility placed on these companies so they act accordingly.
My point was only that you may not have checked but you know about the 737 Max. Do you know about software failures from Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, etc. killing someone? They certainly have but it doesn't get the same press.
This maybe for travel expenses but it's the same story for so many things
1. Start with a mostly manual, people labor based, system that works well (handing Joann receipts)
2. It begins to not cost-scale well with growth (department size increases) or a salesmen comes around with a service that offers to do the same thing for less (Concur) or both
3. The company switches to reduce costs
4. The new service is cheaper partly because it offloads work onto employees (filling out travel expense forms) and by cheaping out on the experience (not caring that the forms are not easy to understand and the system is annoying to use)
5. Employees now have to spend time doing a task they never did and their experience is worse
And it stays in this state forever because the observable costs (service cost vs some number of Joann's) are less. The fact that expensive employees (A department full of Phd's) are now wasting time and being annoyed by this system are not seen. The hours used to fill out those forms and lost productivity due to anger are never accounted for. Also the higher ups are detached because they still have their own personal Joann's taking care of everything.
Why do you assume it is finance departments making these decisions?
Finance departments get hit with the same clueless 'cost saving' as everyone else! Often because the savings are so 'obvious' to MBA wielding middle managers, the decisions are made without Finance advice.
It is also often just a corporate politics thing. Your department has to save money, but there is no measure of how much money you cost other departments. In my experience this is more often done to Finance than by them. Pushing more work from frontline departments to back office departments sounds great to an Ops manager, and this frontline departments often contain people who are good at selling their idea.
I don't assume. I spoke/wrote form experience over many companies big and small (as an employee as well as a consultant). I have seen my fair share of crap. I am an just an old and grumpy guy.
Edit: After opening it up it seems better than before but still not a replacement. I can use the draw tool to create a rectangle but than immediately cannot apply symmetry or equal length constraints until I delete others which shouldn't overlap. Clicking to create a cut or hole opens up a window that does not make it easy to create a new sketch from within or place something from within (but you can just make a sketch were you want something and then open them up and that they lock onto).
I've generally been a pretty harsh critic of FreeCAD because it represents the only entry in the market of linux CAD and it has frustrated me that it does not just do what is known to work. This seems usable. Still annoying, still not a replacement, but usable. So progress.
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