alt Hacker NewsThe pull request is to delete the project and open SOLIDWORKS or FreeCAD.
But don't actually delete it. It looks like a nice alternative to OpenSCAD. But like OpenSCAD it's really a niche thing for designs that are highly parametric like fasteners, gears, 3D printed boxes, etc.
Like OpenSCAD using it for normal "irregular" CAD is going to be extremely frustrating. Like editing an SVG in notepad instead of Inkscape.
I still feel like there's a unexplored space where you combine the benefits of both somehow though. Like a code-based CAD but it also has a GUI editor that stays in sync and avoids the need to type in coordinates by hand. That would be extremely difficult though.
Replies
This is actually what onshape is, under the covers.
The GUI is really just using their scripting primitives, etc. You can access it the same as they can, actually.
>I still feel like there's an unexplored space where you combine the benefits of both somehow though. Like a code-based CAD but it also has a GUI editor that stays in sync and avoids the need to type in coordinates by hand. That would be extremely difficult though.
I think you can do this if the data representation of operations and values is human readable. The simplest implementation would restrict the language/data format to operations representable in the gui.
Unlike trying to solve the "visual programming" problems, we don't need or desire Turing completeness.
Very interesting indeed!
> Like editing an SVG in notepad instead of Inkscape.
Speaking of which, I would love to have parametric capabilities in Inkscape.
> "highly paramteric like fastners, gears, 3D printed boxes"
1. These parts should probably be on McMaster. If you are not using them straight from there, you better have a _great_ reason as to why not when it comes up in the design review.
2. Solidworks has Smart Fasteners, Inventor has Spur Gear Component Generator, Sketch->Extrude->Shell takes 30 seconds, so not sure why 3D printed boxes would be faster or better with this for most stuff. Also, this stuff is easily solved by things like the component library and configurations.