prokoudine

Basically, they are completely hostile to feedback from people who've spent their entire career doing CAD.

There's an entire working group in the project comprised of people who have spent their entire career doing CAD and now take care of making FreeCAD get on par with proprietary counterparts.

There are numerous discussions online where users have constructive conversations with FreeCAD devs and provide useful input to mutual benefit.

Would you care to point me to a discussion where an actual FreeCAD contributor is completely hostile to someone like you?

It isn't minor at all :)

It would have to be done someday. We are slowly running out of desktop environments that haven't abandoned X11.

Not exactly a DAW, but check out Giada.

Here is what students around the world will be contributing to GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, FreeCAD, and other projects

Anagram by Darkglass Electronics uses Buildroot (via the MOD Build System layer), JACK2 sound server, LV2 plugin host, a neural network amp emulator (open-source NAM and AIDA-X tech), and several free/open plugins (fil4.lv2 for a global equalizer, sooperlooper for a built-in looper, etc.).

You could get the same stable diffusion stuff for GIMP two years ago: https://github.com/ArtBIT/stable-gimpfusion

I think everyone will benefit from UX contributions.

Hi Alastair :)

Yes, I understand the frustration. The team didn't come up with anything better although maybe they could. I think another suggestion in this thread could very well be posted to GIMP's issue tracker.

2004: STOP TELLING ME I'M GOING TO LOSE MY LAYERS WHEN SAVING TO JPEG!

Also 2004: HOW DO I RECOVER LAYERS FROM JPEG?

2024: STOP TELLING ME YOU ONLY SAVE TO XCF AND I NEED TO EXPORT TO JPEG!

Also 2024: crickets

I'm not kidding you. That is exactly what I've been witnessing all these years. Project loss complaints went from daily routine to almost zero. But there's a price to pay.

It did find its way to the team, thank you :)

What kind of projects? Is there a story to tell on FreeCAD's blog?

Ah, that explains it. Yeah, the next version of the website will integrate the blog into the main website. So navigation shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Is that a trick question? The Features page is right in the main menu, extremely visible.

Neither Fusion nor SolidWorks mention supported operating systems on their respective homepages. That doesn't seem to present an issue, eh? :)

As for your other points, FreeCAD's homepage does explain what this software can do. It says what this software is right on the first screen. You can scroll down past the first screen to see more info. Even more info is on the Features page that is right in the main menu at the top.

I mean, we can argue about the amount of information, but the basics are all right there for you, in very obvious places, no?

Incidentally, a new (and better) website is in the works.

Yes, that part's obvious just by the name. But what OS does it run on, or does it run in the browser?

The 'download now' button is right on the home page above the fold. When you click it, you see three huge icons for window, linux and macos. Not sure how you could've missed that, but it's there.

It's also what FOSS projects do

Sounds like you are mad at the world and I got in the middle of it. Sorry, I'll see myself out.

You’ve proven my point.

No, not really. You did say 'feature set'.

A bunch of data loading crap,

Sure, if you like editing with color fidelity loss.

but nothing substantial on the usability.

Except non-destructive editing is a major UX improvement.

Except unified transform tool is a major UX improvement.

Except... Well, you get the idea. And I barely got started.

It's almost like you just hate the project and won't accept any changes they do.

I too have my fair share of frustrations with the project — enough to quit it as a team member a couple of years ago. But somehow I don't go around pretending big changes aren't big bc I'm feeling petty all of a sudden.

Much of that has been improved for the next release.

LibreCAD v3 is very nearly abandoned. I could be wrong, but the vast majority of the new code there came from GSoC students who didn't quite stick around for long except just one who did multiple GSoCs but also eventually left.

Why is open source always so bad at UUX - it's so frustrating.

To illustrate why... There's a certain "artistic" FOSS project (before you ask — not GIMP) where the community, incl. former lead dev basically say this:

- UX is bullshit, it's just opinions (verbatim quote)

- No two people agree on what is the right way, so anyone willing to improve UX in this project will have to fight everybody else, don't hold your hopes high (almost a verbatim quote)

- We don't like drama in this community, so we tend to just accept patches that change UI (you'd think this contradicts the previous statement, but somehow the impossible is possible)

They'd also mock a person who wrote a very elaborate first impressions blog post about the software, claiming she is an idiot who didn't bother learning the software.

I don't think the FreeCAD community was ever this bad, but there certainly was a strong element of chaos before. Things are considerably better today. There's a design working group working its way through various incosistencies, for one. It's a long-term project, no doubt about it, they are slowly getting there.

Gimp seems to have the same awkward feature set for 25 years. Apparently the only thing that has changed is they no longer compile against Gtk 1.0, and they decided to have all images in a single window.

Off the top of my head:

- Full color management

- Non-destructive filters

- 32-bit per channel precision

- Late binding CMYK support

- Unified transform tool

- Vastly better selection and cropping tools

- Vastly better text tool

Should I go on? :)

Well, I could go on and on about this, but consuming FreeCAD is not just unrealistic, it's undesirable.

The best a startup company can do is work in quick iterations: throw things at the proverbial wall to see what sticks, then scale up development accordingly. "Consuming FreeCAD" is the opposite of that. It's how you paint yourself into a corner and die a horrible death.

A much healthier approach is to build a great working relationship with the community: lead the way in a few areas where you have great expertise and encourage development in other areas. It has worked nicely so far.

So no, sorry, I don't see Ondsel consuming FreeCAD over the next few years (or ever). But we can agree to get back to this conversation in, oh, 5 years time would be enough?

Businesses that ask for donations don't have a long and happy life :)

What you could do instead is donate to the FreeCAD Project Association. Part of the money goes into the development fund, that is, grants for developers.

I've been rooting for FreeCAD but I think it's just going to be consumed by Ondsel in the next few years.

Extremely unlikely. Also, no such plans :)

Aren't there Rust bindings to ImGui?

You could tell from the beginning that they cared a ton about usability and had their minds wrapped around how people use CAD.

Well, what else can you expect from the very same guy who came up with SolidWorks in the 1990s? :)

I mean, anyone can report anyone for whatever and you will never reach tech support, because tech support at big social platforms never ever responds. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are all the same. You have to have some serious connections to get a ban lifted.

Actually, I'm a former team member and my personal account is banned on Twitter (which I discovered when I tried to log in after half a year of absence). He could be thinking of me, in fact! :)

If you want an open-source kernel, you don't have much choice.

Truck and Fornjot are incomplete and not quite ready for prime-time. libfive is FREP, not BREP.

OCCT is the useable of all. But it also has old architecture, all sorts of imperfections (some of them described by the other guy here), and the code quality isn't great, I'm told (by much more experienced people).