Readit NewsExporting to svg may look completely different when opened elsewhere if your designs have any text elements.
Who is the expert user? What are they building? What are the upstream and downstream application?
See, this is why this area is hard from software pov. It _looks_ like well specified engineering space - something like a network protocol - but actually what you have the engineering happens _in the engineers heads_ and in the organizations that use these tools and the tools that facilitate parts of the process and automate things that are practical to automate. All cad tools are closer to an excel sheet than a single well formed abstract syntax tree like a language grammar.
Now, Fusion 360 narrows down the audience quite a bit but also goes outside of my core expertise (which was in AEC). So I don't have good, detailed off-the cuff opinions here.
I can tell you what the _outputs_ are though. CAM (toolhead planning for CNC or slicing for AM), drawings, and 3D models for project coordination.
So, the question becomes - which of these workflows are we talking about. All of them? And for whom?
I know you specified "Fusion 360" but that is a product that is designed from the point of view of being a vendor-lockable commercial offering. It's really great there. I'm not sure the same package makes sense in FOSS sense.
"Would you use ready-made geometric kernels, improve on existing ones (OpenCASCADE?), or start from scratch?"
If one wants to export STEP then definetly use OpenCASCADE. If additive manufacturing is the target then STL or 3MF suffices and I would use Manifold library there as much as possible. 3D kernel is not the hardest part or even the most important (even thought it's hard and important).
If working in AEC then IFC export/import is a must (it's a schema extension on top of STEP).
"Would you adapt to existing standard formats (import/export)"
Standard formats if you want anyone to use the software for anything, ever.
"Would you build on FreeCAD, ... or do you see no point in that and think it would be better to start fresh?"
I would figure out first what the target user needs. Since CAD programs live in living, breathing industrial design ecosystems you can't really design one in isolation. Without knowing what the user needs and does you really can't answer that question!
If the aim is to offer a credible alternative to Fusion 360, then what you need to do is to make contact with an engineering office. Then you find their CAD manager, and figure out what their organizational parameters are for the CAD workflow. Does FreeCAD work for them? Why not?
If it turns out FreeCAD is perfect for their workflow then it's very likely there are other offices like that, and the FOSS project becomes just about FreeCAD support, education and evangelism.
And actually the key thing might be to design a process how to move the years and years of ongoing project data and models to this new platform. Industrial CAD is super sticky because you have decades of project data, billions of dollars of investment, and hundreds of peoples daily processes being supported by the specific quirks and features of these software.
Personally I'm _skeptical_ FreeCAD would be a drop-in replacememt but if my industry years taught anything is you need to _see what the user does_, analyze their workflow to first principles, then understand how to serve them.
Of course it would be _more fun_ to start from scratch. But the concept is not positioned as expression of personal creativity but pragmatic allocation of hypothetical FOSS investment with the intent of increasing industrial FOSS use and that's a _different_ thing than having a fun personal project.
Now, the above was from the point of view of "offering a credible industrial platform".
If the idea is not to offer a commercially credible alternative, but just to support something like hobbyists workflows for 3D printing, that is a totally different problem to solve, much more simpler, and likely much more fun.
You can - and should be able - to export to a universal format though.
But having a universal format is different than having a universal design space.
The requirments of a mechanical engineer are quite different from that of a structural engineer/and/or detailer for houses. And again different from those of a doctor planning a surgery based on CT model. For example you need rebars only in one of these. You need delicate fillet control only in one of these. You absolutely need support for import and visualization of volumetric data in only one of these.
What I’m getting at that while all design softwares have some common min set of features which _can_ be universal, the number of features in each stereotypical domain are surprisingly disjoint even if only comparing AEC and mech eng. Hence ”universal” design software would be a union of a very, very large set of totally unrelated features. Which suggests it would be hard to develeop, hard to use and hard to maintain.
So it’s better to have a collection of applications that aspire for ”universal scope” as a collection rather than ”one app to rule them all” which you will never get done in any case.
If we presume a hypothetical FOSS mission to enable computer design for all major fields benefitting from digital design for physical outcomes, it should then focus on this ”common min” core, interoperability (strongly linked to the common min core but separate concern - ie import and export) as well as domain specific projects of producing the domain specific UI and tooling.
With that in mind, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on what a practical FOSS implementation of such a framework might look like. Or at least a FOSS alternative to Fusion 360. Would you use ready-made geometric kernels, improve on existing ones (OpenCASCADE?), or start from scratch? Would you adapt to existing standard formats (import/export), or go with a new one? Would you build on FreeCAD, use another suite as a basis (source code if FOSS, or inspired UX/workflow if not), or do you see no point in that and think it would be better to start fresh? I was rather expecting a discussion along these practical lines.
Thanks for your perspective.
Speaking with over a decade of experience as a developer in industrial CAD (but still just one random guys point of view only). The question _isn't_ about the availability of a 3D kernel.
3D kernel is not the "moat".
You can cross that with money.
You can purchase a ACIS or Parasolid and you are off to the races. Or even use OpenCascade if you know what you are doing.
The more interesting question is: Ok hotshot, you have a 3D kernel, 10M of investor money (or equivalent resources).
What's your next move? What industry are you going to conquer? What are the problems you are going to solve better than the current tools do?
What's the value you provide to the users except price?
What are you going to do better than the incumbent softwares in relevant specific design industries?
Which industry is your go-to-market?
Etc etc.
The programmer's view is "I will build a CAD". The industrial user on the other hand does _NOT_ want a "general CAD software".
They want a tool with a specific, trainable workflow for their specific industrial use case.
So "if you build it and they will come" will require speaking to a specific engineering/designer audience.
You can of course build a generic tool (it's all watertight manifolds in the end) but the success in the market depends on the usual story about market forces. What's your go to market/beached. Does it enable you to move to other markets? And the answer usually is - NO. You need to build the market share in _each_ domain separately.
Why? Cursor, essentially a VSCode fork, is valued at $10B. Perplexity AI, which, as far as I'm informed, doesn't have its own foundational models, boasts a market capitalisation of $20B, according to recent news. Yet Mistral sits at just a $14B.
Meanwhile, Mistral was at the forefront of the LLM take-off, developing foundational (very lean, performant and innovative at the time) models from scratch and releasing them openly. They set up an API service, integrated with businesses, building custom models and fine-tunes, and secured partnership agreements. They launched user-facing interface and mobile app which are on par with leading companies, kept pace with "reasoning" and "research" advancements; and, in short, built a solid, commercially viable portfolio. So why on earth should Mistral AI be valued lower? Let alone have its mere €1.7B investment questioned.
Edit: Apologies, I misread your quote and missed the "isn't" part.
Engineer makes an invention: Write 30-Page patent application. Multi-year patenting process with USPTO, pay 1000s of $ if DIY, 10x that if using an IP law firm. Multiply by 4x if going international. With luck, patent gets issued 3 years later. It protects you for 25 years, but only if you have deep pockets for an IP lawsuit in case someone does copy you -- and with uncertain outcome.
Artist releases a song: automatically enjoys 100+ years of protection, even for minor samples, hooks, melodic elements. Lawsuits are easily won as long as you can prove you are the copyright holder.
I have my theories about how we ended up in this state of affairs but no jurist with a sliver of common sense can seriously claim that this is fine.
You're right. The fast pace of growth came from the policies that encourage ruthless capitalism. You can see that Chinese government controls business like oil and tobacco, but it gives tons of freedom for business owners to run wild.
This claim is provably incorrect.
> Analysis of all 37.5 million registered firms in China reveals that 65% of the largest 1,000 private owners have direct equity ties with state owners […] The number of private owners with direct equity ties with the state almost tripled between 2000 and 2019, and those with indirect equity ties rose 50-fold.
> Provincial and local government officials in China enforce laws and control resources, such as land and loans, but these officials change positions every few years. […] Publicly listed firms increase perk spending (travel, dining, and entertainment) by an average of 3.6 million yuan (20%) when new local officials take charge. […] The results are consistent with the view that local officials are important gatekeepers and firms seek to influence them with perks and positions of power within SOEs.[1][2]
> China’s domestic politics have changed significantly over the past decade, with the top leadership enacting much more muscular policies to limit the power of large corporations while also deploying extensive measures to support firms, especially in key industries. According to Hsieh, this trend means that companies need to navigate the state’s “two strong hands,” one supportive and the other restrictive which aim to increase the party’s control over the economy even as the private sector continues, in one form or another, to grow. Moreover, political control is likely proving oppressive for companies as the party-state increasingly weights national security over economic growth. […] These findings […] suggest that not all government intervention in the economy is welcome by Chinese companies, especially if it comes with national security strings attached. The findings from the experiment suggest that state and party influence on private firms may have evolved to prioritize politics above economic growth, creating new challenges for companies that would naturally seek to maximize political support alongside autonomy.[3]
[1] https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/rise-state-conne...
[2] https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/how-do-chinas-fi...
[3] https://bigdatachina.csis.org/unpacking-linkages-between-the...
and Han Chinese culture
It’s a very effective way of erasing and controlling people
Plus given that the government of China is very authoritarian and controlling and not democratic, I don’t think it’s good for the world when they get more land, resources, and economic power (which turns into military power).
- https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-dev-public@li...
- https://rfc.archlinux.page/0032-arch-linux-ports/