On Wednesday 05 April 2017 09:20:27 John Kasunich wrote: > On Wed, Apr 5, 2017, at 05:02 AM, andy pugh wrote: > > On 5 April 2017 at 03:29, Ralph Stirling <[email protected]> wrote: > > > I just wish there was an open source CAM tool of equal > > > sophistication for CNC work... > > > > Unfortunately Autodesk have rather taken the wind out of the sails > > of the open-source CAD / CAM projects. > > Fusion 360 (Windows and Mac only) is (at the moment) zero cost to > > hobbyists and offers very good CAD and excellent CAM. > > > > I can't help expecting Autodesk to wait until everyone is committed > > to their offering then "turning evil" and starting to charge. > > I've been thinking the same thing... I'm trying to decide what to do > for my 3D CAD work. I first got exposed to modern CAD when I was > using Inventor at work. Did some home projects using my work laptop > and Inventor license, love the power of the tool. But my work > priorities have changed and I no longer have access to Inventor. > Which really drives home the problems of these tools. The data is NOT > portable. I have a couple years of part-time hobby work that I simply > can't recover. > > Solidworks seems to be the industry standard (something like 60% > market share), but the pricing puts it just as far out of reach as > Inventor or Pro-E. I actually bought a licence for Alibre a couple > years ago for almost $1K, but I very quickly became unhappy with both > the tool and the company (especially the company). Not willing to > invest further work into stuff that will be trapped in their format. > > That leaves Fusion 360 and FreeCAD. I certainly like the philosophy > behind FreeCAD. Unfortunately, my projects are typically machinery, > and I absolutely need to make assemblies from a mix of standard > (screws, bearings, etc) and custom (housings, shafts, etc) parts. > Assemblies seem to be a distant after- thought for FreeCAD. There > have been several attempts at an "assembly workbench" for FreeCAD, and > it looks like every one has died before becoming usable. I think part > of the problem might be that the core of FreeCAD was designed by > people who were thinking only of part design instead of complete > machine design. I haven't had time to actually set up and use > FreeCAD, if anyone can comment on how it handles assemblies I'd like > to hear from you. > > Fusion 360 seems like a very nice tool... but like Andy, I don't > trust Autodesk for a second. My hobby projects move slowly - I need > tools that are viable over a timescale of a decade or more, (or data > format that let me extract my work and move to another tool). I just > don't see that in the 3D world, from anyone.
Very well said John. What freecad needs are volunteers with a bigger vision. And someone to bring their build tools out of the Hardy Heron framework. I have not been able to build the later versions for at least 3 years now. Too many dependencies on really old libraries. But just for S&G, I've dl'd the src tarballs for both version 16, and 17-pre, which has some huge changes in the workflow, NOT recommended for beginners like me. :) But now the scene is reversed, now my libraries are too old. boost is 1.49, needs 1.55 or greater, And even version 16, which requires cmake, refuses to do anything but spit out about 250k of build help per invocation regardless of what I pass as build options. And I finally found an example build command line, which bails out quite early as my installed boost libraries are about 6 versions too old. Back writing description scripts for openscad. Sheesh... I made some changes in the addf order in my hal file, and between that and hacking up a power bus for the pi directly from the 7i90 power input, it seems dead stable. With the maxvel slider set for a speed I know x can move at, its probably made a couple dozen lathe_pawns without a joint error in a couple hours. Even my jog wheels can't break it. And they are dead accurate repeatable. I have an automation tech driver here that could drive x 2x faster, if I had the psu to drive it, needs around 5 amps at 70 volts. I can find a switcher in the pile that can do 4 something at 60, which if it weren't so damned noisy, would help. But that thing puts 10 volt switching spikes all over the system. My electronics box simply isn't big enough. Sigh. Thanks John. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
