[Fab] FreeCAD : Thursday, 5/02, 8PM, at Noisebridge : Open Source Parametric CAD Modeler. A forum to discuss, discover, and design its potential.

Wed May 1 20:52:20 UTC 2013

Just to clarify, 3D Thursday is ON this Thursday 05/02/13.  Anyone interested in 3D printing, designing for manufacturing, CNC guys, or product designers is welcome.  There's been such a wide variety of interests with attendees, you'll certainly find something or someone very interesting.

Bring your prints, bring your STLs, or bring your Printer.  just Be There!

When Corey says, "meetings should be put on hold", he's referring to the FreeCAD ( or any 3D software ) subset of 3D Thursday people.  FreeCAD is defiantly an awesome tool, and I'm sure anyone who's used it is excited about it.  But there's also lots of ways to find things to print, even if you're not a designer.

The intention of 3D Thursdays is to meet at Noisebridge every Thursday 7 - 10 PM *unless* there's a monthly Five Minutes of Fame meetup.  3DT is a time and a place, but mostly it's the people who attend!

BYOB.  BYO3DP. NoiseBridge is a community supported Makerspace, so a donation of $2, $5, or $8 would be hella cool of ya.

If anyone has any requests of what's happening, please lemme know.  I can bring a Mendal Prusa Reprap, or a Kinect scanner, but not both.  There's usually a tableful of 3D prints to look at anyway.....

-matthew-

On Apr 30, 2013, at 9:37 PM, Corey McGuire <coreyfro at coreyfro.com> wrote:

> Hey all,
> 
> Lots of time pressure this month, on me, personally, and as make faire draws near, probably many of you as well.  I am thinking the next meeting should be after maker faire.
> 
> Thanks for your excitement and involvement!  
> 
> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 9:58 PM, Corey McGuire <coreyfro at coreyfro.com> wrote:
>> Hello illustrious hackers, geeks, artists, engineers, architects, and otherwise "parametric modeler, inclined",
>> 
>> This is an invitation to join me for an informal discussion and exploration of the state of "FreeCAD", a parametric modeler in the style of Solidworks and Inventor.  We'll be meeting for 3D Printing Thursday at Noisebridge, a weekly event that we avoided last week because of Noisebridge's monthly "Five Minutes of Fame".
>> 
>> Last Thursday, the 25nd, was spent authoring a document for actual fabrication.  There was a good deal of tangential usage demonstrations and we did not complete the document, but we had a great dialogue among the group.
>> 
>> This Thursday, May 2nd, I would like people to demonstrate, in their preferred tools, their usual usage.  Simultaneously, we'll talk about how usage might work in FreeCAD.
>> 
>> Details!
>> 
>> 
>> SAN FRANCISCO, Noisebridge (2169 Mission), Thursday, May 2nd, 8:00PM.  Entry is free, you DO NOT need to be a member.  Noisebridge is free to all!
>> 
>> This discussion is open to all but I highly recommend that people have considerable experience with parametric modelers.  What we will be discussing is:
>> :-) Hey! Look! A free parametric modeler!
>> :-) How is it like or unlike Solidworks and Inventor?
>> :-) What are the unique nuances/vocabulary differences between this and other programs?
>> :-) Can we complete a series of simple models using basic features, and if not, where does the overall picture fall apart? 
>> :-) Can we begin describing in tutorial form the basics of part development?
>> 
>> And the ultimate question!
>> 
>> :-D Can we make something?!?!?!?!!!!!
>> 
>> I am excited by this tool.  This opens up CAD to anyone with a computer.  We may be months away from the first tool that can bring this functionality to new users for FREE!
>> 
>> I'm already doing research to this end with the tool so I can lead the discussion, but instead of being a simple, by the books instructional process.  We will have experienced engineers, architects, hackers, and artists.  I want to execute from your skill sets.
>> 
>> I look forward to seeing you!
>> 
>> Join us!
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Further event description:
>> 
>> 
>> There is a new tool in town.  A free tool, an opesource tool, a powerful tool, a tool that is designed to compliment and facilitate the creation and fabrication of things.  This tool is FreeCAD, and it is a project (as opposed to product) that is showing massive potential to break us free of expensive, closed, cumbersome, tools that don't play nice with the rest of the industry.
>> 
>> What this tool promises is an end...to the seemingly endless...battle with software for designing and building our world.
>> 
>> The nuts and bolts of this tool are in place.  It's like a BMW, in all its precision .. just without the sporty interior, the fenders, the windows.  We can expect it to do what we need it to do, but the interface, which is very intuative, is also not complete.
>> 
>> Which is where we come in.  Not to design the interface, but to explore the interface and view the interface with the eyes of a new user.
>> 
>> We will find the interface very familiar because it borrows from the solidworks/inventor paradigm.  But neither of these tools are terribly intuitive to a new user.
>> 
>> This software is designed to be as powerful as the tools we are used to, but to be more approachable. 
>> 
>> My goal, our goal, it to see if it is.  Our goal is to try a couple "hello world" parts of our choosing and find out where we get snagged along the way, and report this back to the developers.
>> 
>> The ultimate goal being, guide this tool to becoming the open access to industrial design and engineering software package the DIY community deserves, and to build a common language for people to use to share design intent so that the domain of design is not encumbered by cost.
>> 
>> Following this meeting, I hope to design hardware and platform agnostic curriculum to get the DIY community up to speed with CAD!
>> 
>> So, who would like to join me?
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler - Albert Einstein
> Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication - Leonardo Da Vinci
> Perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away - Antoine de Saint Exupéry
> Keep It Simple Stupid - Kelly Johnson
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