CAD

From the makers of solidworks comes the new untitled game!

Here's the game play! Solidworks will tell you there's a file that needs to be saved! You know, because some rando in your company referenced to it in a sketch. SW provides you with a "don't show again" button! That way if you don't want to play that game, you can play one of the next two hundred ones that look exactly the same! Its great!

What's the file or the relationship? That's for you to find out!

I only write grievances because I know nothing will change.

Suppose you got two locations one is anywhere around a circle. The circle is at 45 degrees from at least one nominal plane. The other point is on a line located also at some off angle. You want the straight distance.

In NX this is simple... Point to point minimum for example would get that dimension. Otherwise you can use the circle as the plane of orientation and measure up towards the line. Anyone who has ever done this by hand and has some background in calculus could figure out a way. But not solid works. No sirybob! That's a $10k feature a year if you need it!

How about a green hue theme for the entire app? No problem! That's the next upgrade! And screw you if you don't upgrade because anything someone opens with the new version is magically not backwards compatible! Fuck solid works! Stop using this stupid software.

I Begin my shitty Cad software year with solid works.

Imagine you are checking in an assembly into PDM and it flags an totally unrelated part or assembly as a reason for not checking in (which is soon convenient, I can't tell you how much I would love to be stuck at home because the battery on one of my 4 TMP sensors is dead. Lovely. Couldn't even drive to the tire shop if that was the case)...and so you go type the name of this component in the filter. I type at a good 30 words per second while this filter accepts 1 letter per minute. Possibly blocking, meaning you can only type the next letter after the previous letter has been registered and a new letter accepting window is open. Who designed this deep shit idiotic entry field? Must have had a brain aneurism while coding it. Dude, let me type the fucking word, then when it's done, take your fucking time searching for it! Grrr!

cross-posted from @[email protected]: https://lemmy.world/post/23787115

I've managed to do reverse engineering of circuit boards using GIMP and rough alignment of layers using images like the one pictured. I want to use images to reverse engineer parts in CAD, but the minor lens distortion of a camera on a phone at ~20cm high on top of a stack of objects to keep it eyeballed flat is not enough. The result is off in multiple planes. There are minor errors in my curves in the transparent CAD part pictured, but the hole pattern is correct. The picture has been calibrated to 20mm against the ruler. Any suggestions on how to make this usable for replicating the ellipse that crosses the holes ±0.05mm?

So I often like to save a version of an existing assembly to a new one.. "Save as copy and continue". I would expect a simple rename click, done action. Instead I get hundreds of these extra "do you want to rename x part" windows. Enjoyable. Each screen has a "don't ask again" checkbox but it is incorrectly designed to not ask again for that one part where the problem is that a torrent of parts will ask the same question. SW is plagued with stupid shit like this. Several revisions later, still not addressed.

Let's take her out for a spin...

EDIT: annnnnd two crashes on the x86_64 AppImage in twenty minutes, both when attempting to start a sketch on a face. Could easily be my Kubuntu install, but... sigh.

EDIT2: Seeing that some issues might be related to changes to the Appimage framework. I'll need to see if I need some system updates. Windows version is running smoother, though my middle mouse button stopped working for some reason until restarting the app. If you haven't tried FreeCAD in a while, give it a shot; you may be pleasantly surprised. If you have, it's not a vastly different experience than recent daily builds or Ondsel (RIP).

They expect to release 1.0 in a week or so.

Not that it's much to brag about, or that I'm rare for having done so, but I definitely called this one. I am really not sure how they ever really thought FreeCAD just needed Cloud PDM to make a dent in the commercial market. Hell, part of me wonders if the devs actually believed that, or if this was all a low-grade Robin Hood grift to plow some VC resources into FreeCAD for a couple of years. 🤣

29 January 2025 in Brussels. Probably the next good candidate for a 1.0 release event as well. Latest blog has them down to four release blockers, though that number can certainly drift back up as well.

PDM vs just a network folder....hmmmm.

Issue stats: overall, there are 1852 open issues in the tracker, down by 14 from last week. 26 of them are v1.0 release blockers, down by 14 from last week as well.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18633629

This doesn’t sound like an issue for those who use Fusion frequently, however you may want to find ways to get local files, just to be safe.

I have become fairly proficient with OnShape thanks to their free courses and while I am fairly competent with the controls and achieving something serviceable, I would really love to get into learning more about CAD/product design best practices.

There's probably a class or two in freshman engineering that gets into this stuff but I am mostly picking things up through trial and error. I am mostly just poorly imitating stuff I have seen after a few decades of taking things apart and occasionally putting them back together.

Like: How should I design two parts to fit together optimally? How should I decide what kind of hardware and why, or where? Screws? Bolts? Glue? Holes, where and why? What are some things to look out for when designing universal parts?

Also, are there any good references for working with PLA? I have a good sense of what things will look like after slicing and have got pretty good at making things that will print well and be strong but I could always use more references.

Context: when creating drawings from parts/assemblies, you can use a foreshortening break on any derived views (section, detail, projected). However, by default, inventor will propagate that break to the parent base view... which usually completely blows up a different sheet in the document that I don't even realize -_-

Not once have I EVER wanted to propagate a break in a derived view to the parent base view...

It doesn't overcome all of the limitations of TinkerCAD (points to anybody who can come up with a block that semi-automates chamfers and fillets), and block code is inherently limited itself of course, but they are certainly a good match.

I worried during the intro that I wouldn't be able to handle the Youtuber, but he settles down after a minute or so and does a kid-friendly but calm and useful tutorial.

I'm in the market for a new monitor. My 32" LCD is nice but now I have some spending money and really want to move up to an OLED display, as they seem to be maturing nicely and can give me an amazing bump in refresh rate.

Many OLED displays are curved, of course. All ultrawides are, some severely so (800r!!!)
I've always shied away from curved monitors because I feel like it could distort the appearance of some solid/2d geometry vs a flat panel. (I'm also not crazy about the desk space they occupy either, but I can work around that).

Do any of you use CAD packages (solidworks, inventor, autocad) on curved monitors, and if so how well does it appear? My target would be a 34" or 42" 4k display.

I imagine they're targeting their meetup in August to announce version 1.0.

Weekly Builds Download

I think they picked one of the better ones, though now I regret not screenshotting the poll to remind myself of which ones I voted for.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16141810

Github: https://github.com/zalo/CascadeStudio

Very solid and mature parametric modeler, and if your workflow doesn't rely on booleans too much, the hobbyist version is generally under $200 for a perpetual license.

credit to @[email protected]

cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/9709155

Heart Shaped Container FreeCAD Tutorial

Made a FreeCAD tutorial for making this container: https://makertube.net/w/mg7rdKStSUua7AhnAt1RoM I have to warn you that I made a bunch of mistakes and it may be really hard to follow.

Maybe we get v1.0 this year.