For really complex stuff like the main body of the OpenFlexure microscope scripting is ideal. Better interplay/communication between script based and graphical CAD.But if I have an counterbored, or tapped hole I need to manually edit the call out. Again TechDraw in FreeCAD has come along leaps and bounds, but there are many pain points. For this we need good technical drawing capabilities, including the ability to spec tolerances, parallelism, etc. For open science we need this sort of high-end, few in the world, type specialist equipment to have open plans too. In the OpenFlexure project we generally 3D print, but for many precision instruments (and especially vacuum instruments) the parts are all machined. Better support for mechanical drawings.There is some option for this in FreeCAD, but with multiple competing workbenches it is hard to know which horse to back. Good CAD assembly, here things can be aligned not by just positions and rotations that are pre calculated (as we do in OpenSCAD), but by making faces co-planar, aligning hole axes, etc. These instabilites cause models to break as they are altered. Graphical CAD with less topological naming instabilities than FreeCAD (I know RealThunder’s work will merge in eventually).But I can believe that is not true for many projects. I would be more interested in the tools improving. For me, personally, I often feel that explaining how I need something designed is harder than designing it.Below I put some other things that I feel open CAD really needs. This is a very powerful workflow for us, but script based CAD limits collaborations with many collaborators that are not comfortable with programming. For OpenFlexure we use OpenSCAD and it is also script based and parametric. For mechanical CAD I feel we are much further from where we need for widespread adoption. I know feel very strongly for electronics about the importance of open electronics CAD, and CERN support KiCAD. Truly open science needs open instruments, and truly open instruments need open CAD. This is again why I am so excited you joined the forum. The goal of that project is to merge the mouse-driven and programmatic CAD worlds so that users get something akin to FreeCAD or Fusion360, with the power of programmatic CAD being accessible just below the surface.įantastic thread. Semblage is a newer CAD project I have started which is currently in rough alpha condition (not recommended for anything but technology preview). In this way you create one CAD model for a whole family of sensors, rather than creating a model for each sensor. You could have a sensor box that has the parameters of “sensor_length” and “sensor_diameter” that change the dimensions of the box to fit a sensor. What this means is that you create a Python script to generate a CAD model, and it has settings that can be changed to alter the dimensions of that model. CadQuery is a Python based CAD scripting API, which is parametric at its core. Some additional context: Two of the most directly relevant projects I contribute to are CadQuery and Semblage. There are no guarantees, but if there is a way to discover projects that need help with CAD, my thought is those needs can be forwarded to the open source CAD community (or at least my corner of it).
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