Comment by Blackthorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Blackthorn | Hacker News Reader

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> Perhaps this is inherent complexity?

I don't think so. I use Solid Edge, which is quite good at this. You can push geometry out of the history based parametric scheme into freeform modeling. There's some pretty fascinating YouTube videos from Siemens showing importing of 3d cad models from other programs, and then repairing parts of them. Granted, I've never done anything on a truly massive project like an assembly with ten thousand rivets or something.

The author sells two different CAD products that supposedly do the same (zw3d and ironcad), but I haven't used either of them

In my own personal experience, using Solid Edge outside of the consumed-sketch history mode and in free form mode (which still has both sketches and a history stack) has been much much more pleasant. I started using it long after they introduced that "synchronous technology" as they call it, and didn't even realize that history/consumed-sketch mode was an option for quite a while.

I took a look at my own history (heh) but couldn't find the original video series I saw. I did see this which demonstrates a bit of editing of imported models: https://youtu.be/ZQb1GNVKy74

The design intent inferring is pretty slick, some other videos do a good job showing it off (and also how to turn it off if it doesn't get it right). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nPQOalmlrc for one of those.

I've used IronCAD, Solidworks, pro/e and AutoDesk Inventor. If you're approaching 3D modelling as a draftsperson, IronCAD was much more productive. Want to change this part, just do it. Want to specify a relationship, you can but it's entirely optional. It's hard to describe how much faster it becomes. This was particularly noticeable in the hands of our 2D drafties who converted.

But I have also had the joy of trying to program IronCAD. The parametric solver is not as good as the other programs (who live and die by it). I suspect, though cannot prove, that the little automation system we used to create a base design would have been a lot more stable running on a different system. But it was too much work to completely re-implement (and convert all the old designs etc.). So I had the joy of fixing changes between versions by e.g. swapping the direction of a constraint, or hard-coding an initial offset so that you approach a solution from a particular direction.

Also, adding 2D annotations to create a production drawing were painfully slow and finicky in IronCAD.

I think I agree with the author that history-based editing caused the whole industry to go down a less-efficient path, but I also think it's too late to change the past now.

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