Comment by tapia 7 days ago
This looks super nice! That is kind of the interface I wish FreeCAD could have. I am more the type of person who likes to use a python interface to create parametric models, but this is really cool!
Anyone knows what is the status of Truck [1] in this regard. Are they going to implement an open-source CAD program with their CAD-kernel? That also looks like a promising project.
Thanks for clarifying cadmium's status and offering your take on the state of truck and fornjot. So, what happened with cadmium? Is Truck just too primitive to build on top of so far? It looks like both of these kernels are actively being developed, what do you think of their rate of progress?
meh, internal problems mostly
No idea where truck is going, it'll take me quite some time to tinker with CAD I think, it left me quite a bitter taste...
Fornjot seems to be doing good, I'm donating to them and I get regular updates (you should too!). Still, there's a long, long road ahead
If I were to do this all over again I'd either go the OCCT route (like chili3d or zoo) or solvespace. they're both "lacking" kernels if you compare them to the commercial ones, but I think there's enough "market gap" for makers that would prefer a sustainable CAD format instead of perfect fillets (and IMO freecad is not the solution).
Keep in mind though that my efforts where laser focused on non-math stuff. From what I gathered from my time in cadmium, b-rep kernels are hard in an unsustainable level. Browser level unsustainable. I just hope that out of seer necessity we'll find another way to solve the CAD problem, instead of a b-rep kernel
I think that the tools are not will organized, and I always have problems finding the tool I need in the menu. The concept of having different workbenches does not work good for me, as often I am looking for a tool and then realize I am in the wrong workbench. But it is not always clear why something is in a workbench and not in the other, and there are duplicated functions in some workbenches. Also, the fact that it does not support Wayland makes everything look blurry in hdpi screens. I like that it has a good python API though, but the documentation is a bit lacking. However, the different workbenches also sometimes complicate the use of the Python API. I like e.g. how build123d works.
There's an active knee-jerk hostility in the FreeCAD community to any user problem that even hints that it might involve a comparison to proprietary CAD. I've had "FreeCAD isn't Fusion and you shouldn't expect it to behave the same way" thrown at me when I've been discussing something bone-headed FreeCAD was doing.
I've never used Fusion, in any incarnation.
- There are too many views whithout explanation of what they are
- By default the position of the tools and buttons is a chaotic mess
- There are things that seem to be the same but arent (e.g. Sketch from the "Part Design" and "Sketch" view)
- The 3D view is glitchy. The reflections make things invisible, AA is off by default, there is no proper Grid...
- The QT stylesheet is kinda ugly. If you literally delete it completely and revert to the default that QT has it looks much nicer.
- The settings are a bit messy and often it's not clear what they do.
CADmium is built with the Truck kernel, though it looks like CADmium has no repo activity since June '24. https://github.com/CADmium-Co/CADmium
There's also the Fornjot kernel. https://github.com/hannobraun/Fornjot