El 7 de febrero de 2016 12:10:09 GMT+00:00, Fabio Pesari <fabiop@gnu.org> escribió:
On 02/07/2016 11:12 AM, Andrés Muñiz Piniella wrote:
http://www.freecadweb.org/ used by one of our makers to do a cnc
machine. I believe she uploaded it somewhere.
...
I have used solidworks, it is bloated and not one user uses even 3%
of it's capabilities.
Andrés, you seem to know your way around CAD. Are you saying that
FreeCAD is a worthy replacement for SolidWorks, and is ready to be used
by professionals? Should developing a free CAD program still be a high
priority or should the efforts be focused on FreeCAD? What about the
sorry, I do not want to give the impression I know all. I've used some of the proprietary 3D cad packages. 3 that I recall. But only got as far as loading up examples on the free software ones.
I *think* it can be used by professionals and it is used (once saw in the freeCAD forum someone saying that their company wanted to use it and help fund/develop the project), but I have not used it enough and I can't say I am a professional more like 'in the company of the blind, the one eyed person is the boss'.
First I want to use more freeCAD. But my dream was to have a web page like open clipart to upload parts and assemblies. Combinded with version control it would be interesting for companies to have in-house: one of the reasons a professional firm moved from one propietary CAD package to another CAD package was that the latter has a better version control system or toolbox.
The engineer I know that used it said that support for easier assembly of parts was coming but not yet there. That would be good. It would have saved her lots of work probably: currently one has to set the coordinates and orientation of the objects while propietary packages say stick this surface concentric to this one.
what freecad needs is for people like me (or daring real engineering professionals willing to take the plunge) to use it and at least feedback developers. There are already some good tutorials.
Also it would be great if there is no vendor lockin in universities because they get a free as in beer package. But that is systemic but seems to happen in hacker/makerspaces as well [1].
But this is my personal view and a bit of mea-culpa mixed in: I have not done enough.
Should it be upthere in priorities such as encryption or medical software like *gnuHealth* I do not know.
DWG
format, do you think somebody can make a GPLv3+ fork* of FreeCAD
synched
to upstream that has support for LibreDWG?
* = FreeCAD is released under the LGPLv2 "or any later version", so
this applies: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.html - Point 2.b
By dwg you mean going from 3D to 2D? if so, I have been thinking a lot about this. When I use the 2D drawing it normally is because file format is a problem for the engineers doing the parts. And then a dimension is missing and they have to call me back. propietary pacakages I have used have an autodimension tool but last I used it there would over-dimensioning making the whole drawing messy. They probably improved on it by now. in a new version. With not backward compatiblilty on file formats.
2D has it's place I am sure, but not as important or soon will be less important. For 2d there is the *libreCAD* mentioned ( I have not used it). or if you do interior design there is *home sweet home* .
I am not atuned with the intrincancies of licences avoiding things going two ways. Is that what you mean?
nor technical reasons: For example in the faif podcast conservancy mentioned the need to develop a finance app or improve one. gnucash was never mentioned. My guess there was something that could not be added to gnucash to work as it should for USA tax system.
Is that the case for FreeCAD? I do not know. From what I have seen there is no show stopper just people like me need to just go ahead and use it . I am sure many of us thought desktop gnu/linux was less user friendly than the propietary counterparts.
For 2D the default I get is dxf. When I did a little bit of MEMS fabrication that was done in DXF as well. Laser cutting is also dxf: people I know use inkscape but it does not do the fonts correctly or something.
For sharing 3D when I do not have the same propietary package as sender/reciever the default I get (and have given) STL. that becomes tricky when you want so share an assembly. Whoever you send the assembly will not be able to separate it in parts (definition of binary?). Also I have been told that when some slicers for 3D printing recieve the STL from some propietary packagers sometimes they are 10 times larger than intended. Blender does STL as well but I have been told there are mixed results in that as well. Maybe it is the nature of the beast?
Worst thing: people share gcode and STL files and consider it openhardware. yeah you can copy it, but modify it? No idea how to do it. I have even tried with a propietary CAD package mentioned. I think I even had trouble finding out what size it was. Also, I think there are two STL formats one with a number 500 attached to it. It gets really confusing.
Is the solution another standard? I do not know. [2]
Sorry I probably rambled on and still did not answer your question.
[1]
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/uk-hackspaces/RwrmwxwuY-8/EKEndIL2AQAJ