Slim chance you didn’t already try, but I thought to point this out just in case.
Workflow in a nutshell:
- Start a sketch on a plane, use toolbar circle, draw, type dimensions, close sketch.
- Click the rectangle you made and use toolbar extrude.
- Click the resulting object (bottom left) and export as STL / 3MF file.
It is parametric design:
- Discover your oops. Go back to sketch or extrude, edit dimension, entire design updates by magic.
- Dimensions can be changed into a quickly editable #variablesYouName by typing # basically.
Documentation is short and to the point. Same for most videos that explain how to accomplish something specific. Love it.
Their licensing kerfuffle was a bit more subdued than Autdesk's on-going slow motion crash (maybe AD has finally come to a rest) --- as noted elsethread, all documents on a free account are public.
The opensource alternatives are a wide-ranging lot:
- BRL CAD --- intensely old-school, it is one of the oldest opensource codebases
- FreeCAD --- exactly what it says on the tin, the recent fixes and UI updates have put it back on the radar for a lot of folks
- Solvespace --- small/light-weight and nimble (a single downloadable executable on Windows last I checked) it has a UI which I never found comfortable
- Dune 3D --- the new kid on the block, it has a remarkably polished UI (it's the only interactive CAD program whose tutorial I made it through more-or-less successfully) --- it's had a number of previous discussions here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228257
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958
Or, of course, one can just code a design using OpenSCAD (and for the Python folks there's https://pythonscad.org/ and so forth).
malfist•6mo ago
Me personally I don't care, I'm not making anything I'm going to sell, but you should be aware if you are
NoNotTheDuo•6mo ago
> 7.2.2 For any Public Document owned by a Free Plan User created on or after August 7, 2018, or any Public Document created prior to that date without a LICENSE tab, Customer grants a worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to any End User or third party accessing the Public Document to use the intellectual property contained in Customer’s Public Document without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Document, and to permit persons to whom the Document is made available to do the same.
[0]: https://www.onshape.com/en/legal/terms-of-use
Perhaps more importantly, the Free License doesn't allow for any commercial use. If you are designing something for commercial use, then you can, should, and are obligated to, upgrade to a paid license.
upghost•6mo ago
infogulch•6mo ago
The sales rep called me and seemed miffed when I said we're not an engineering firm, and we do not need CAD for our line of business. Sorry buddy, but my use case is for a commercial purpose (not for sale but it is designed for and would be used by a business...) so I can't really sign up for the free hobbyist license that explicitly prohibits commercial use and fails to clarify exactly what that means.