” The problem is that the industry doesn't really know what it wants.
”
I would argue they do. What we call ’CAD’ today - digital design of surfaces for manufacturing - originated in aerospace and automotive industries.
What they _want_ is to manufacture.
To manufacture they need designs as input.
The designs ultimately end up as
a) drawings
b) surface models for toolpath programming
c) 3D models for project coordination, validation, etc
They don’t actually care how many buttons you need to press as long as the final design is fit for purpose.
I agree CAD software is stereotypically not fun to use.
Also - there is a non-trivial population of CAD users who actually take pride in their skill to use these more or less broken tools. It’s some sort of weird masochistic/macho badge of honor.
My guess is optimizing the cost of design is not that interesting to anyone as long as a,b and c from above are fullfilled.
The engineers labour who needs to use the CAD tools is an insignificant percentage of the total cost in any case.
To understand why you need to dive into to the cost structures and value creation mechanisms as well as the culture in hardware.
To start with, in many fields the overall culture in hadrware is ”we sell the same junk as everyone else”.
”Just having a solid, open-source framework to build upon”
What’s missing from OpenCascade?
” There would be no AWS without GNU/Linux.”
Sure there would. Open source more or less copypasted existing industrial/academic patterns. But open source probably makes it cheaper and better.
There would no AWS without internet. Both as the protocol but also as the billions invested to the fiberoptic cables crisscrossing the worlds oceans.
The world is built on hardware. Hardaware is not _stupid_. But it’s _different_ than software.
To revolutionize CAD you first need to have deep understanding of the _hardware_ value chains and industrial methods. I think what makes it hard is _not_ having a kernel but having this cross discipline knowledge inside single org.
The existence of CAD/CAM/engineering software cartels like Dassault and Hexagon suggests that more rent-seeking than innovation is occurring, actively stifling innovation.
It would be like if Oracle, Broadcom, and Computing Associates owned 99.9999% of the software market.
Give good open-source tools to the people who are actually making the hardware, and there will be supply-chain-wide positive externalities.
Weeelll … it’s a 70 year old field if you start counting from NC. It’s also possible most of the low hanging innovation fruits were picked long ago. Also innovation required decades of _really hard work_ in applied maths (see nurbs or catmull-clarke surfaces*).
I’m not saying there isn’t room for innovation!
But we also have the examples of several other types of applications clearly reaching maximum utility. Photo editing around Photoshop 6.0 or so, word processing like decades ago, spreadsheet like decades ago.
Sometimes things _do_ seem to have their optimum form.
I’m not saying FOSS CAD would not have a value! But it’s not obvious to me it would be a vehicle for innovation.
I guess better, more easier to edit and robust surface presentation would be valuable if someone came up with them. But that’s a field that requires generally decades of applied research to first find a better model and then a decade of productizing the innovation.
So since you need to keep industrial mathematicians on board without certain outcomes it’s a bit same as medical research - need continuous investment, careers, etc. For this reason it’s not obvious to me there would be an open source framework that would work here predictably.
Again, I’m not saying you are wrong. Maybe there are simple low hanging fruit just waiting to be picked. But I’m not sure you are exactly right either.
* Catmull-Clarke surfaces are a great example. Ed Catmull founded Pixar decades after inventing the surface, but it took a decade of industrial research inside Pixar before they became a usefull tool (Geri’s Game). Toy story was still NURBs, somewhat ironically.
I would argue they do. What we call ’CAD’ today - digital design of surfaces for manufacturing - originated in aerospace and automotive industries.
What they _want_ is to manufacture.
To manufacture they need designs as input.
The designs ultimately end up as a) drawings b) surface models for toolpath programming c) 3D models for project coordination, validation, etc
They don’t actually care how many buttons you need to press as long as the final design is fit for purpose.
I agree CAD software is stereotypically not fun to use.
Also - there is a non-trivial population of CAD users who actually take pride in their skill to use these more or less broken tools. It’s some sort of weird masochistic/macho badge of honor.
My guess is optimizing the cost of design is not that interesting to anyone as long as a,b and c from above are fullfilled.
The engineers labour who needs to use the CAD tools is an insignificant percentage of the total cost in any case.
To understand why you need to dive into to the cost structures and value creation mechanisms as well as the culture in hardware.
To start with, in many fields the overall culture in hadrware is ”we sell the same junk as everyone else”.
”Just having a solid, open-source framework to build upon”
What’s missing from OpenCascade?
” There would be no AWS without GNU/Linux.”
Sure there would. Open source more or less copypasted existing industrial/academic patterns. But open source probably makes it cheaper and better.
There would no AWS without internet. Both as the protocol but also as the billions invested to the fiberoptic cables crisscrossing the worlds oceans.
The world is built on hardware. Hardaware is not _stupid_. But it’s _different_ than software.
To revolutionize CAD you first need to have deep understanding of the _hardware_ value chains and industrial methods. I think what makes it hard is _not_ having a kernel but having this cross discipline knowledge inside single org.