Sketchup alternative?

[626Pilot]

Sketchup is great for large objects (e.g. architectural stuff), but the inference engine is badly designed. It's always moving points around behind my back, refusing to let lines be where I put them, "forgetting" that lines divide planes (although it will "remember" if the lines are cut and then pasted in place), and generally increasing my workload to the point that the time it saves is a negative number. I got a Pro license to use the Solid Tools, which should really be called the Screw Up Your Geometry Tools. Most of the time I have to scale up my objects by a factor of 10, use the Solid Tools on them, and then shrink them down again. If I don't do this, horrible, unrecoverable errors will creep into my geometry to the point that I eventually have to throw out entire sections of a model, or the whole model altogether. (And that's assuming they don't ruin the object right away, which they often do.)

I've used Blender before and I'm probably going to switch back to that soon, but I was wondering if anyone has a better suggestion. Blender isn't so bad, but I was wondering what people think about OpenSCAD, SolidWorks, etc. I don't mind dropping some dough to get decent CAD software. My major pain point is time. I have a lot to do and not much time to do it in, so my ideal CAD software helps me out as much as it can (like Sketchup) while not randomly ruining my geometry (like Sketchup.)

[edward]

FreeCAD: http://www.freecadweb.org

I urge you to NOT join the OpenSCAD movement. While it does have its place for complex shapes due to its scripting abilities, such as all of the twisty vases and organic designs, I think it would be much better if new CAD users learned software similar to that which the industry uses (FreeCAD does have Python scripting, though). Most will likely never professionally do CAD, so I suppose one could argue against my position, but writing lines of code to create a 3D model, then having to refresh and compile the object, is not how most people's brains work. Sketchup has a dumbed-down interface IMO, but as you are already comfortable manipulating 3D objects, I don't think you'll have too much trouble jumping in to FreeCAD. Then from there you could even more easily move into commercial offerings as the user interfaces are quite similar.

Blender is for 3D graphics and animation, but some people can do nice things with it for 3D printing and engineering-related CAD. For that specifically, I wouldn't recommend it.

FreeCAD is under active development. I build the latest trunk almost daily and only occasionally run into issues. The only thing I miss is assembly features, which is on the near-term road map for development. FreeCAD can also import STL files and convert them to usable solids ready for manipulation, with some caveats. I see this as a huge bonus for the 3D printing community until they decide to move to a better file format.

I'm a long time user of commercial CAD (ProEngineer, Catia, Solidworks) and I am really liking FreeCAD as an open-source alternative to spending hundreds of dollars for a personal license of commercial wares.

(A bit about my view point: I am in general a huge advocate of open-source software where appropriate. If I could afford a full seat of the latest Pro Engineer, I wouldn't hesitate. Also, I really don't want to have a Windows computer if I don't have to have one, and I haven't found one commercial offering with a Linux port, yet.)

Try it and let me know if you have questions.

[626Pilot]

I don't mind writing code and compiling it, but does it make you do that for everything? I think LOGO is cool but I don't use it unless I have a pressing need to draw a gear or something. If FreeCAD has native STL export, that would already put it ahead of Sketchup. You have to use a plugin and it seems to introduce errors sometimes. (Like Sketchup needs help introducing errors!)

I used Blender for a long time but its usability is up to maybe 1998 standards. It's eaten my work before. It's not horrible, but it isn't really helpful either.

I don't like using Windows either, so I run Sketchup in a Windows VM. I assumed the right software would be more likely than not to require Windows so that doesn't bug me. How do those commercial apps you mentioned stack up against each other? At some point spending hundreds of dollars is far more attractive than yet another night of staying up until noon the next day. I really, really don't like telling someone I will have a product for them and then getting stymied because of some problem that's out of my hands.

[gestalt73]

this. What edward said.

FreeCad feels alot like ProE or Solidworks, but perhaps that's because there's only so many ways you can do a parametric modeller.

I switched from Sketchup to FreeCAD and haven't looked back. Once you get the hang of parametric modelling there's no going back.

It may take you a few hours to get the hang of things, but it's worth it.

Take a look at this simple tutorial, this was all I needed to get started.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/f ... k_Tutorial

[edward]

Yes FreeCAD has native STL export. You just create your model using the 'Part' or 'Part Design' workbenches, then switch to the 'Mesh Design' workbench and create your mesh. You can adjust the granularity and then inspect and repair things if necessary.

I would say that all of the commercial offerings, for what most people would use them for when designing parts for 3D printing, are going to be nearly identical. The big differences are going to be found when you are dealing with massive projects and assemblies, with multiple designers, and need project management and other enterprise level features. Pretty much all have the same workflow but possibly with different names for the features. I ended up on Pro Engineer because that is what was used most in the ME department at school. Now I think they are back to Catia...

[626Pilot]

FreeCAD seems to dump core without warning about three times an hour.

[edward]

What are your OS and build details? I'm on Kubuntu 13.04 and commit da319c5 (from 9 days ago) and occasionally get them, but not that often. I haven't updated to the latest trunk because anything later than the build I'm on seems to be in the midst of a large FEM merge and the mesh generation is throwing a library reference error. I haven't seen anything on the bug tracker so I think I need to get on their forums and ask around.

As I mentioned is still under heavy development, so I just save and save often. My mindset is usually "well at least I didn't pay for this..."

Maybe you see things the same way, but I can understand if you don't.

Let me know some more details about your setup and I'll try to help as much as I can.

[626Pilot]

Same OS, and as for FreeCAD it's the recommended version from their website. I'm going to upgrade my libs and reboot, and if that doesn't work I'll probably get a commercial package for Windows. I'd rather figure out FreeCAD but time is money.

[edward]

That's too bad that it's not working for you, so here comes one of the quintessential statements of a good open-source project: "Works great for me" (TM).

Have you tried the Daily Build PPA? With those sorts of options I usually install and then disable the PPA, only re-enabling occasionally when I get hungry for new features or to get a bugfix.

One commercial offering that I have just heard about but have never used is Alibre or what is now Geomagic. I've only been told their license prices are quite reasonable.

[geneb]

I've heard that Alibre/Geomagic is a horror show from the user's standpoint, so you might want to talk to some folks that actually use it before spending any money.

g.

[626Pilot]

Got OpenCAD running stable, but there's just too much stuff missing. Example: There appears to be no way to move a primitive around in the GUI. You have to go and type coordinates and dimensions by hand. Please tell me the commercial stuff isn't like that.

Looked at OpenSCAD. Seems great for when you need absolute mathematical precision but I think the rest of the time it would be as fun as reading train schedules.

[edward]

Yeah I've tried that too. When you start looking into open source CAD options you can get easily excited to discover the OpenCascade kernel (on which most of these projects depend) and its capabilities, only to later realize that it is such a huge and complicated beast that nobody has yet produced a great front-end interface for it. Such is the nature of free software, I guess.

[edward]

So I just became really excited by the possibility of a new option in the 3D design world, and a free one at that, but I should have known that I would be let down by the system requirements.

http://www.designspark.com/page/mechanical

FREE Mechanical Design software to be released on September 16. Winblows only

[Eaglezsoar]

So I just became really excited by the possibility of a new option in the 3D design world, and a free one at that, but I should have known that I would be let down by the system requirements.

http://www.designspark.com/page/mechanical

FREE Mechanical Design software to be released on September 16. Winblows only

Thank you for the tip edward. Perhaps they will have a future release for the Mac.
I definitely will check this one out. Nice find!

[626Pilot]

I got pretty excited about this too. I'm going to use it as soon as I can figure out how to resize my virtual disk.

[geneb]

It's like they've taken the workflow from Sketchup and added proper CAD constraints to it. I'll have to check it out at some point I suppose.

g.

[626Pilot]

First impressions:

Looks sort of like Sketchup.
You get a little box in the lower left corner that shows you the XYZ axes in the current view, so you always know (no more "red axis" "blue axis" crap like in Sketchup.)
Pull-to-extrude works the same as in Sketchup, except that there doesn't seem to be any inference. If you're extruding something and you mouse over another surface, it doesn't try to bring the extruded surface to that level. Not good.

There is a large black rectangle in the bottom of the viewport, and the mouse cursor is offset vertically by the height of that rectangle. (In other words, you click with the mouse and it does something a few dozen pixels above the cursor, making it very weird to use.) The black rectangle doesn't respond to any GUI conventions, looks like dead space to me. It might be because I'm using VirtualBox (which is up to date, including the guest additions.) The site mentions that they don't support VMs.

If it wasn't for the black rectangle, I'd say this is looking like a decent alternative to Sketchup. Maybe someone else will have better luck.

[edward]

The VM shouldn't make any difference other than performance.

I'm satisfied to see that it might be an improvement for someone. For me, I suppose I'll continue to work with FreeCAD. I'm not a fan of the pull-to-extrude finger-painting style interfaces.

[626Pilot]

The VM is presenting some sort of generic virtual video card, so if there is some minor bug in the driver it could screw up OpenGL. Google Music doesn't like running on VMs either for some reason.