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alnwlsntoday at 5:25 PM2 repliesview on HN

I think most GUI CADs have some kind of API like this. In FreeCAD it's Python. In Solidworks, it's VBA or C#. I don't think any are particularly well documented or supported by tutorials.


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unholinesstoday at 7:17 PM

Solidworks has VBA macros, which (on top of being poorly documented and unstable) subvert to the whole benefit of parametric CAD. Once you're creating features with a macro, you naturally want to edit them, but you also naturally want to rerun the macro itself to create them differently. It's like editing generated code and it's not a viable long-term setup.

FeatureScript is a different beast. It actually runs as part of regeneration in Onshape. Standard features (extrude, loft...) are also defined in FeatureScript, so your custom features are the same first-class citizens with a interactive GUIs and stable updates to upstream changes. You can freely mix interactive CAD and custom code by adding standard features and custom features.

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