[Noisebridge-discuss] free-cad - the one true free mechanical CAD package that will save the world!

Taylor Alexander tlalexander at gmail.com
Fri Mar 23 07:15:37 UTC 2012


Solidworks user here. Downloading now. The screenshot looks really
impressive! I'm also a Mac user and I have to run Solidworks in a VM. Boy
would I love a native CAD program!

As someone who got an Ultimaker a few months back, I've gotten extremely
excited about the coming pervasiveness of 3D printers, and one serious
issue is the lack of any real Free/Libre Mechanical CAD programs.

I have no time to do code development, but I can say to others - the
development of good open source tools for creating CAD files (and
processing them for 3D printers - see: slic3r.com for my new hope) is
extremely important for ensuring that in the future we'll all have cheap 3D
printers making us whatever we want whenever we want.

A $500 Printrbot is great, until you realize that solidworks costs $4000,
and nothing else out there comes close to the power of solidworks.

So this is awesome. I've lamented the lack of any good FLOSS Mechanical CAD
packages (graphics cad like blender doesn't count) but I had no idea there
was something like this in the works!

I've been reasonably content with Solidworks as I actually have a legal
license (thanks work!) but it sucks for people that aren't in my situation.

Software guys jump on this!

-Taylor

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 11:50 PM, John Magolske <listmail at b79.net> wrote:

> Hi Michael,
>
> Thanks for putting this out there, will have to take a closer look at
> FreeCAD. I've been doing Mechanical CAD for 20+ years (AutoCAD, Pro-E,
> now mostly SolidWorks), and have been wanting to sit down go over the
> available FLOSS offerings...sounds like a great idea for a meetup.
> I like all your suggestions for the proposed focus of the special
> interest group and would like to contribute in some way, though I
> wouldn't be available to put any time towards this till early May.
>
> BTW, has anyone taken a look at http://www.varkon.org/  ?
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>
> * Michael Prados <mprados at gmail.com> [120322 22:24]:
> > My background is in mechanical engineering, so I'm only being slightly
> > hyperbolic in the subject heading.
> >
> > http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page
> > [...]
> >
> > Are there people interested in meeting to talk about this?
>
>
>
> --
> John Magolske
> http://B79.net/contact
> _______________________________________________
> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>
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