FreeCAD in the Browser

26•cui•1h ago

Comments

techbro92•1h ago

Why would I want to run this in the browser vs locally?

fragmede•1h ago

Because then it doesn't matter what you're running locally, as long as you've got a supported browser (Chrome, I'm guessing). It means it doesn't have to make a difference if you have a Window 10 desktop or a MacBook Air or a Chromebook. Go to the web page and look at this CAD.

cui•1h ago

This. The browser as a universal platform.

Evidlo•29m ago

Like electron, but it's fine this way for some reason.

gkhartman•1h ago

Probably nice to have for those with low income that only have a Chromebook.

SequoiaHope•10m ago

Browser can be local. What’s nice about browser based is that browser based programs can run on every device. Though it sounds like this one requires chrome which seems weird to me.

s1mon•1h ago

Onshape is free in the browser as long as you are not doing commercial work. It’s a professional system from the founders of Solidworks that competes with all the top CAD tools.

throwup238•42m ago

> It’s a professional system from the founders of Solidworks that competes with all the top CAD tools.

Because it's built on Parasolid, the same geometric kernel as everyone else. With ACIS pretty much out the door, almost all the professional CAD packages are just window dressing on the same CG implementation.

SequoiaHope•12m ago

Agreed. I’m not OP but for six months I’ve been using Claude to build a from-scratch CAD kernel based on Rust and WASM, MIT licensed.

The actual UI still needs a lot of work, but I’ve been focused on the kernel. Fable has helped a lot though Opus was already making great headway.

I’m an OnShape power user going back about ten years, Solidworks before that. I need a CAD system that absolutely works. There is a lot of work to do still, and it still seems impossible to succeed, but I’ve been very happy with where things have been going with it lately.

It’s serverless, local, and browser based. You can load the latest binary from GitHub pages here:

https://sequoia-hope.github.io/waffle-iron/

Click the Assay menu to see the kernel test cases we’ve been using so far. Rapidly closing on 100% support!

dd8601fn•56m ago

Sounds cool. Doesn't work.

cui•54m ago

Seems it's only supporting Chrome at the moment.

ebspelman•42m ago

The launch graphic says "Ported end-to-end by Fable, an AI agent" and it definitely feels that way. Buggy, glitchy, needs some love and human eyes before it's really usable.

NavinF•41m ago

FreeCAD on desktop is much the same in my experience. If LLMs were mainstream a few years ago I would have assumed the UI was 100% AI generated with zero human input besides a oneshot prompt.

cui•30m ago

If Solidworks and Onshape were born after the birth of LLMs, they'd probably be glitchy as hell.

emmelaich•20m ago

Amazing. How much did it cost?

cui•18m ago

It's open source.

dang•17m ago

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Comments

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