Re: [DIYbio] Re: Open-source CAD

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 1:35 PM, John Griessen <john@industromatic.com> wrote:
> BRLCAD
> has a lot of translation capabilities,
> so could be the power tool and some folks use FreeCAD as the beginner tool.

Yeah it's pretty cool how many formats they handle, it can even import
the commercial Rhino3D files, so there's that for beginners with some
$ in their pocket but who want the ability to export to formats that
are open. Of course they would lose parametricity (is that a word?) I
think, at least if they were using scripts to generate their models.

> In electronics, gEDA tools have a few more capabilities and a scriptable
> style
> than KiCAD, so it falls out the same -- experienced
> sometimes use both, mostly use gEDA tools, and translators
> are coming soon, so KiCAD can benefit from
> existing designs and libraries of parts, and vice versa.

Hmm, I can't remember why exactly I chose KiCad over gEDA, I remember
reading about them both and I guess KiCad came out to have a path of
less resistance. Since I've been doing electronics design automagic
generation at work, I've been realizing KiCad has some things that I
would like (Python scripting interface for all facets of the
application) but don't exist and are not terribly easy or fast to
learn how to debug/add... but that is really just because I've become
less comfortable with C++ with all the Python I've been writing. I
also don't think (but don't know) if electronics CAD needs the
performance of lower-level languages, higher-level languages allow
engineers to get closer to the code even if they aren't the main
developers, it's easier to read and easier to give feedback on.

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