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by traeblain
2147 days ago
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I cannot agree more with this comment. CAD software is still so dominated by proprietary systems that maintain their own version control and feature set. And since all the major players offer a "suite" of tools, there's no incentive to seamlessly interact between products. You spend so much time trying to figure out how you are going work with importing a neutral export (meaning you've dissected the data from its version control), and maintaining any data accuracy. I was honestly extremely hopeful when OnShape hit the market. Granted it was still a proprietary tool, but felt it had the tooling and integrations to bring CAD systems into the "modern era". Then they crippled their free offering, removing it's discrimination from tools like Fusion. And now with their purchase by PTC, I have no hope in it making any further waves in the CAD space. |
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I'm sure many people on HN have experience meeting a one-person self-taught software team in a small company that developed their own version control system called "copying folders". In mechanical CAD, half of the industry is at that level, but it's even worse because your shard libraries may be updated irreversibly and without notification when you don't intend, or not updated when you intend, depending on such factors as the order in which you loaded your projects.
I was sad enough that GrabCAD was purchased by Stratasys, but at least it's plausible that it exists for a while. I didn't know OnShape was purchased by PTC. I was also really hopeful and play around with it about once a year. It's always missing something I need, but was getting close, and some of the features they add are really innovative. They are also honest about what features are missing.
On the other hand, I still have a soft spot for Pro-E since it was my first MCAD package and to this day miss some of its parametric features (but certainly not its interface).