[ramshanker]

I will try the newer version again. Last I tried 2 years or so back, it was crashing for me.

Personal Context: I am a civil enginer, and our requirement from CAD softwares are a lot simpler than Mechanical Engineering. Here on HN, whenever I see people discussing CAD, its the mechanical version of parts and 3d printing.

Shameless Plug: I have decided to try building my own! Over a long enough timeline, it is doable, including the UI/UX part.

https://mv.ramshanker.in/

[criddell]

UI/UX is not the difficult part. The hard part is the geometric modeling kernel.

[jlarocco]

In practice everybody uses an off the shelf modeling kernel like Parasolid, ACIS, C3D, or OpenCascade.

[obelisk79]

If you've ever done UI/UX research and worked with volunteer developers who only care about technical problems? It is the hard part. Good UI/UX is hard to begin with, its even harder when no one is interested in front-end development.

[cracki]

The history of FreeCAD proves that UI/UX is the hard part.

[pkphilip]

Is there a reason you don't just use FreeCAD, SolveSpace, Dune3D etc instead of attempting to develop all of this from scratch given that all of this software is open source in any case?

[ramshanker]

As I said, all these are optimized for Mechanical engineering, to the best of my knowledge. In civil, there are lots of standardization in 3D part and a lot more focus on 2D side. Major part of building design is using standard steel section. Mechanical side, apart from nut bolts, everything seems to be custom. Software interfaces prioritize these use cases.

Think of I beams, all major countries have national standards of shapes and sizes. There are many "devil in detail" nuances.

So, giving it a go myself. If not for others, at least for my own itch. This is one aspect of open source.