HN user
Replicad is designed primarily to be used as a library with the web editor as a helper. FluidCAD is designed to be used as full CAD package code + UI. I've outlined some of my motives in recent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47721997
Only step import at the moment. I'll add svg next.
+1 for what adrian_b answered above. All the promotion are for free open source projects and none of them is profitable. I think this is totally fine, people like to know about alternatives and all these tools are for the purpose of learning and making parametric CAD more approachable to users. They have same goal with different implementation.
CadQuery was an inspiration when I built FluidCAD. I wanted the workflow to be as close to traditional CAD as possible with more interactive UI.
I have added a caching mechanism; objects are computed only when their parameters change. When an object change, all objects after it will recompute. This will probably need to be revised in future with more efficient algorithm to find what objects are affected by the change and recompute only those.
Yep, topological naming solving is a hard problem to solve. It took FreeCAD many years to get it to work correctly. That's why I went with indices for this version. You can also use filters like extrusion.endFaces(face().arc()) to get only arc edges.
Regarding the picking; that's exactly the region picking feature in this screenshot: https://fluidcad.io/img/region-extrude.gif
When the user click on a region we insert a 2D point, then the extrude feature will find the nearest face. I have experimented with adding this picking logic to selections too select().pick() which will probably be merged in future releases.
The interactive region extrude feature is designed specifically for fast modeling at the expense of making the model "not so parametric". When user pick a region, the raycasted point is inserted/hardcoded in the code. e.g extrude(100).pick([100, 100]) So if the sketch dimensions change, there is a chance the point will fall outside the region boundaries which will break it. It is preferred to use proper boolean operations in sketch mode to define regions while keeping it parametric.
The interactive region extrude is there for when you want fast modeling/prototyping.
The constraints solving took a good amount of thinking while designing FluidCAD. At first I tried to make it all declarative where user just create unconstrained geometries then define constraints, something like: const l1 = line(); const c1 = circle(); // define constraint l1.length(100).position(x, y).tangentTo(c1) ...
Then I decided against this idea because it results in too much typing + the constraint solver implementation is not trivial and there is not much web based open source solvers. I went with a mixed approach instead between declarative and imperative. https://fluidcad.io/docs/guides/sketching/constrained-geomet...
It seems from what you are describing your software is more like (replicad)[https://github.com/sgenoud/replicad]
The user can create planes with plane() command e.g plane("xy") or plane("xy", { offset: 10 }); but I have added some shortcuts for common planes (https://fluidcad.io/docs/guides/sketching/introduction#sketc...)
you can also sketch on faces sketch(extrusion.endFace(), ...) which will extract the plane from face and put the starting point on the center for convinience.
Most of the CAD operations are supported, some are just basic implementations which will be improved soon. https://fluidcad.io/docs/category/3d-operations
Assemblies will come but not anytime soon. I did some research and tests and it is going to be a challenge. You can still add multiple parts in one scene but no actual joints implementation.
Yes, PRs will be open on v0.1.0 I just want to finalize some design decisions and create a roadmap first.
You are welcome.
There is a guide section and one tutorial: https://fluidcad.io/docs/guides/
This week will be all for documentation.
It is only a subset of features focused on solid modeling. Surface modeling will come in future versions
Based on opencascade wasm. Features in the docs. Api coming soon. No it was not, I started this before I even started using coding agents. It took many iterations and rewrites before settling on the current shape. After building the core features I started using claude to add more features, improve test coverage and generte docs.
I'm working on one with features you mentioned, with the main goal to make the workflow similar to mainstream CAD. Will release the first dev version in less than a month.
I'm working on a parametric, feature based CAD by code software which should be released next month. LLMs are good at generating code. It should be able to handle any complex task given a good documentation. I'm planning to write an mcp for providing feedback to the LLM but that will come at a later stage.
The code is based on js and opencascade with a feature rich vscode extension.
I'll post it here on release day.
Never encountered this issue until I tested GLM and Kimi K2 models. Opus and Sonnet seems to be good at handling this, even when giving them a code with open tags, they'll know where to put the closing tag quickly.
nvim, yt-dlp, gnome I'm sure there are many more I don't recall right now
I use neovim so claude code makes more sense to me. I think having the code agent independent from the code editor is a plus.
What we need is not an editor. We need a coding agent server which we can use from any editor we want.
Github copilot supports neovim
"lahja" in Arabic means dialect
Thanks. I'll do some research on that.
Having a beard is very enough to raise their suspicion as they will link you to terrorism without thinking twice. In 2015 I bought a metal detector online and they thought I will use it to search for monuments. They returned it and I was lucky it ended there.
OMG. I am Tunisian and was planing to buy an sdr dongle next month for research purposes. I guess if I had done it I would be in big trouble by now. It is well known here that customs are very suspicious about any device they do not recognize. Back in the early 2000s they were questioning people about their USB sticks!
There are some in Tunisia
Recently I had to do some updates on a UI that used tailwind framework. It was the most unpleasant experience I have ever had. I quickly got eye strain looking at all those attributes.
Keep HTML for HTML and CSS for CSS.
No one is obliged to bid on such projects. You'll find clients who pay good rates too. I have been freelancing on Upwork since 2010, I never bin on low budgeted projects and usually I'm happy with $35+/hr rates. That may sound to low in US but where I live it is very high pay rate.
Usually I use Paint.NET for quick edits and Microsoft Snip[1] (not Snipping Tool) for screenshots.
I started to used VIM seriously last month. My biggest concern so far is editing new files. Too much switching between INSERT and NORMAL modes.
This is not a problem when editing existing files.
Also I think some keyboard shortcuts are not comfortable on an AZERTY keyboard layout.
I misunderstood. my apologies.