Just close your eyes and imagine how much creativity and productivity could be unleashed if basic CAD was as accessible as a document editor.
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I used to think this was bottlenecked by the difficulty of mastering 3D programming, perhaps.
I now think that two cultural factors are likely just as big an issue: vendor lock-in taking air out of the room for innovation and the assumption that all engineers can improve their own tools, so “other engineering” gets little love from the software world. Maybe.
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Until it's possible to make it truly collaborative it's tough to make a case for starting from scratch on a tool for an expert audience. I've been watching
@figmadesign slowly take over. Users compromise on features and switch their habits only if they're getting something better -
Yeah! I was kind of thinking
@figmadesign but for designing in the physical world.
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Think that’s right. There’s also the “priesthood” aspect of engineers wanting new engineers to go through the same learning curve/hazing ritual, so resisting improvements in tools or process.
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@mwichary brought me here. Ask me why I picked up programming -
(
@saikofish invented and put together Streetmix [https://streetmix.net/ ], which is my favourite example in that category.) -
I can't take all of the credit! I had an idea, but you and
@klizlewis (+ many others) made it real. -
While I'm here—and going back on topic—I have wanted a basic CAD editor (at least for architects) for so long. Ideally, open-source, browser based, as that's my ecosystem.
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But browser-based document editors are still in bad shape (Google docs is still the leader on this and still beats the functionality of Evernote, even if the latter is supposed to be built for purpose) and open-source has a way to go (https://draftjs.org/ is no CodeMirror)
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So to think anyone is going to come out the gate and do a 2D CAD tool at the level of Google docs proficiency is wishful thinking _but_ I believe it can be done. And it can be so so valuable
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So much of design & construction (again just thinking architecture) is not entire projects drawn up at once but tiny detail sketches (think one-pagers) invented and shared during construction, or afterward, with peers
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I wonder if there's a natural feedback loop to programmers programming tools for themselves (and other programmers) whereas engineers (the physical kind) are sort of stuck using whatever the existing CAD stuff can or can't do. Having more free tools like Fusion is neat though
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Fusion isn't free. If you start making money with what you designed in Fusion you suddenly owe huge amounts for full software. That cliff is part of what keeps HW startups from starting.
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...you pay $300 a year IF you make $100k or more a year. That's <0.3% of your yearly budget, and probably cheaper than any other part of your hardware startup's op budget. No one is being gatekept by free-then-maybe-$300-later pricing
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The building blocks to enable a free / cheap MCAD app (e.g. CAD kernel, constraint solver) don’t have quality open source implementations. Licensing core components is what’s driving $$$ CAD.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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