Advice from a manufacturing engineer

[outlier]

The scripting interface is a little off-putting, but what really bothered me was that there seems to be no support for a contoured surface of any kind, every surface is broken into flat facets. See here for an example:


http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/OpenScad_beginners_tutorial#Sphere


Now there are plenty of parts where this is not a problem at all and you can crank up the facet resolution when it does matter. This is what struck me as primitive though, that you can't truly define a shape as fundamental as a circle.

 

[DaveC]

A quick rant: What we were using was hideous even by the standards of seven years ago. AutoCAD outclassed it by far in terms of usability, functionality, and stability. It was such a relief when we switched. This is probably why I am so enamored with pro/e.

Wow that must have really been bad. AutoCAD is pure shit for 3D. I use that too at work but only for 2D drafting (which it is great for). Hell an old version of CADKey Solids we have from 1998 which I still use once in a while still blows away the 3D solids capability of AutoCAD 2010!


I have been doing CAD for 25 years and have used allot of different ones. I still like the speed that I can make changes in a decent direct modeler. I can also change imported "dumb solids" as if they are native and the parametric modelers choke on those. I can stretch the width of an entire machine with hundreds of parts in minutes, even though it wasn't a predicted change. Still again I can see advantages of both, depending on what you do.

DaveC: Have you had a look at OpenSCAD yet? Looks pretty nice, and someone like you might be able to do amazing things with it: http://openscad.org/

Thanks for the info. I am not a code guy at all though. I can see that someone with coding experience could do powerful things with it but it is above me, I am a point and click guy


I own a legal copy of KeyCreator already so I am fine with that.