I have used CAD software quite a bit during my childhood and BTech and realise the great difference between Autodesk tools and OSS Alternatives.
While blender has already overtaken their stuff in its domain, I feel the need for an alternative for AutoCAD [1] that can overthrow its crown. While I can’t expect anything for stuff like ArchiCAD, Revit etc. which would require loads of domain specific knowledge.
Never tried CAM software, but I see 3 OSS ones here, so perhaps you can check out any that you haven’t. I’d be interested in knowing about your exp with these, since I don’t have much to think of how to test those.
It’s been a year or two since I played with OSS CAD/CAM. It was still heavily lacking. QCad is only 2d.
I check it every few years hoping for improvement.
FreeCAD UI was still so bad it was basically unusable and I could not wrap my head around it. Horrible interface and totally unintuitive. I’m still not sure how to take a simple linear measurement. Installed a plugin that sort of worked to measure. That crap was designed by aliens.
The OSS CAMs can generate a tool path, but it is difficult and they aren’t feature rich. CNC programming puts food on my table and I need the speed and features of pro level software. If I was playing with a router and doing a lot of 2d stuff, I could make it work for that. Especially if my time didn’t matter.
If Mastercam would just port to Linux I would happily switch.
I’m a CNC programmer with enough computer programming knowledge to be dangerous but not actually contribute to the various projects out there. Sucks.
I’ll have to throw qalculate on my computer and play with it. I’m actually rebuilding our new little farm right now and am taking a break from machining while I put our home right. If our savings hold out, I’ll be building my own shop.
I have the ability to create basic a 3D, line based design tool. Though I would have to read up on NURBS. Maybe QCad has the potential to grow in that direction.
I just still tend to hope that it may be implemented in something fully featured like Blender, which is more geared towards artistic modelling and replaces stuff like 3dsMAX and Maya. It does have some plug-ins to support precision drawing, but last time I checked, I was still not convinced of using it in an AutoCAD like workflow.
I really wish this could be fixed.
I have used CAD software quite a bit during my childhood and BTech and realise the great difference between Autodesk tools and OSS Alternatives. While blender has already overtaken their stuff in its domain, I feel the need for an alternative for AutoCAD [1] that can overthrow its crown. While I can’t expect anything for stuff like ArchiCAD, Revit etc. which would require loads of domain specific knowledge.
Never tried CAM software, but I see 3 OSS ones here, so perhaps you can check out any that you haven’t. I’d be interested in knowing about your exp with these, since I don’t have much to think of how to test those.
qalculate has Windows binaries too
currently checking out QCAD ↩︎
It’s been a year or two since I played with OSS CAD/CAM. It was still heavily lacking. QCad is only 2d.
I check it every few years hoping for improvement.
FreeCAD UI was still so bad it was basically unusable and I could not wrap my head around it. Horrible interface and totally unintuitive. I’m still not sure how to take a simple linear measurement. Installed a plugin that sort of worked to measure. That crap was designed by aliens.
The OSS CAMs can generate a tool path, but it is difficult and they aren’t feature rich. CNC programming puts food on my table and I need the speed and features of pro level software. If I was playing with a router and doing a lot of 2d stuff, I could make it work for that. Especially if my time didn’t matter.
If Mastercam would just port to Linux I would happily switch.
I’m a CNC programmer with enough computer programming knowledge to be dangerous but not actually contribute to the various projects out there. Sucks.
I’ll have to throw qalculate on my computer and play with it. I’m actually rebuilding our new little farm right now and am taking a break from machining while I put our home right. If our savings hold out, I’ll be building my own shop.
I have the ability to create basic a 3D, line based design tool. Though I would have to read up on NURBS. Maybe QCad has the potential to grow in that direction.
I just still tend to hope that it may be implemented in something fully featured like Blender, which is more geared towards artistic modelling and replaces stuff like 3dsMAX and Maya. It does have some plug-ins to support precision drawing, but last time I checked, I was still not convinced of using it in an AutoCAD like workflow.