Star Simpson

i gotta say, my own experience is 100% to the contrary. i designed legit CNC'd parts first with Sketchup, then taught myself Inventor (lucky to work somewhere that had licenses, but near zero mentorship/guidance). then a string of pirated licenses, then Fusion + Eagle.

It’s the “lucky to have free access” followed by “a string of pirated licenses” that I think is both common and where this chain is weak. We need someone to bring in the 2006 iTunes Store to fix the rampant workaround for a lack of a satisfying accessible option.

i know you've seen the replies already, but Fusion is really impressive and both it and Eagle are virtually or literally free with a ton of online documentation. i would have agreed with you in ~2012, and agreed that HW != SW, but it's remarkably easy to get into today.

EAGLE needs improvements so badly. Yeah, it’s free. I still keep it in the category of things that might be replaced and thereby unlock a huge amount of productivity.

but my point would be that once you’re ready to ditch Eagle the cost of Altium prob isn’t the #1 thing holding you back from pursuing hardware. Tho my ulterior motive of trying to get smart people to discard the Bay Area’s SW bias might be influencing that perspective ;)

It’s not possible to measure how much is lost nor how many are turned away from hardware as a result of the challenges around using the tools

Being honest, I think even I feel a certain amount of dread about what a pain it is to deal with any/all of the ECAD options, which is a hurdle/setup cost I still face and have to get over if I’m thinking of doing a new project. And I’ve used or written my share of ULPs.

I’ve gotten into Fusion 360 lately after years of 4-figure/year CAD and it’s blown me away with what’s it’s capable of. And often on sale for $99/yr.

I feel like last time I used Fusion360 I wanted to like import a standard 3D file format and got denied. Like it's really exciting but then has these stumbling blocks where I never know if I'm going to be able to do what I need to do?

What would your “dream CAD” editor do differently from currently available ones?

It’s a VERY long list for ECAD. Check out EAGLE, which has time traveled through to the modern day all the way from 1995. For mechanical CAD, a model of affordability and machine requirements similar to Photoshop would be superb.

Wait, what's wrong with paying for compilers? When I paid for compilers, they were fast, and computers were not. Today, the reverse.

Not really a comment on paying for compilers.

For Mech, OnShape is one I'm keeping an eye on. ("Freemium" IIRC). I'm definitely excited to watch this revolution roll in :)