Re: SolidWorks is cool, sort of (but FreeCAD might be better)

On Fri, 20 Jun 2025 01:46:26 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 13:46:21 -0700, john larkin wrote:
>

On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 01:36:44 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>

But you said “Edrawings is pretty good but needs a painful
re-licensing ordeal roughly twice a week. For every computer you
use it on.”

>
Not really twice a week. It times out in about a year, and it also
refuses to open .SLDASM files that were created by a more recent
version of SolidWorks.

>
So it hasn’t been keeping up with SolidWorks? Not really a good
substitute, then.

Sure it keeps up. But you have to update it to import a file created
with a recent version of SolidWorks.

It always works with Step files.

>

But most software and things like security camera services and many
web sites are increasingly annoying.

>
Make that “most *proprietary* software”.
>

SolidWorks is expensive ...

>
My point exactly.

>
Not too expensive for my guys to use to design things. Just too
expensive to use as a viewer. They could send me screen shots, but
it's fun to zoom and spin things around myself, which Edrawings
does. And it has the measure feature, so I can verify dimensions.

>
Does it have fly-through/walk-through modes?
>

It does all that cool stuff apparently instantaneously, even on the
wimpiest laptop without fancy graphics hardware.

>
That’s not a big deal any more.
>

<https://www.kicad.org/>

>
We use PADS. We've been using it since the DOS days when there was
basically nothing else.

>
Seems like it’s still around, but it’s gone cloud-only.

Not for us. We purchased six copies outright.

>
<https://sourceforge.net/software/compare/KiCad-EDA-vs-PADS-Professional/>
>
Apparently KiCAD got some investment money from CERN.
>
<https://www.reddit.com/r/KiCad/comments/wy20gi/wanting_to_switch_from_pads_to_kicad_is_it/>