PDM is the current buzzword for lower-end CAD. Alibre just added it. OnShape tries to embody it. Solidworks hobbyist options only continue to exist in order to market it. Even the Ondsel startup that hired some FreeCAD devs built their (failed) business model around bolting PDM on.

This looks like it’s taking a more traditional “cloud storage” model and replacing it with something more PDM-like so they can sell to low-end corporate users, and the hobbyists just get rolled in because ain’t nobody maintaining something just for the freeloaders, who can be forced to get used to it anyway and might push for it if they ever get work in the field, simply because they know it.

My guess is it’s not inherently worse than what it’s replacing, but it’s likely complicated and kinda clunky for a random person designing gears and project enclosures.

hexbear: 1.9k users per month

.ml: 2.3k users per month

lemm.ee: 3.8k users per month

.world: 17.2k users per month

Unwanted centralization is a fair enough complaint, but honestly us normies are mostly just… normaling.

Voyager on iOS has worked well enough I haven’t gone hunting for anything else. On desktop I like the Alexandrite front end.

While the progress towards making printers user friendly is impressive, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company whose mandate and path was clearer than Bambu’s.

From the beginning, they’ve hemmed and hawed about contributing their source code changes required by the licenses of software they’re using, and they have built in the infrastructure that would allow them to “flip switches” to lock users out of functionality when they decide it’s a plausible market strategy (e.g. default cloud connections, tightly integrated website/repository, and RFID “identification” readers with non-generic codes), all while taking VC, charging a premium, and presenting a customer-facing image that emphasizes their similarity to vendors in more mature and locked-down segments. They’re not a walled garden right now, but many those foundations look really solid, LOL.

I’m not immune to taking the path of least resistance. I have an iPhone, my Xitter account is the only one I’ve actually deactivated, and I use a couple of Windows-only commercial software packages, but I do flatter myself to think I’m clear-eyed about what I’m giving up. Bambu has always been “Enshittification-ready.”

LOL, somebody’s been watching

Hmm, very possible, though I didn’t notice it the last time I was moving the print head by hand. I’ll let it sit and try again. The room also gets a bit dusty and the printer sits for a while between jobs, so I’ll make a point of cleaning the belt and rails before the next print.

Gonna have to upgrade one of these days to something enclosed and lower-maintenance, but I’m cheap with broad-ranging interests. I enjoy tinkering enough that, up to certain limits, working with less expensive “time-sink” hobby gear doesn’t bother me if it means I get to try something new.

Or rather, I’ve convinced myself that I do. :-)

My printer shares my home office with our bird (PLA printing only, and that not particularly often), and while I have an air cleaner that keeps it from being FULLY bird-dander central, dust is an issue for objects that sit. I’ll brush off the rail and belt particularly well for my next print.

Thanks. It seems like it’s fairly new, and the next print I did was similar in size and shape and with the same roll of PLA, but it has a less pronounced effect, though I can still feel it. I’ll check and see if any similar sized prints from farther back exhibit it, but I could very easily imagine something getting knocked a bit when I was last messing around with it. I had a roll of “Eco” filament that was giving me no end of trouble and eventually required a hot pull and new nozzle, and I changed out the plastic extruder for an aluminum one while I was doing stuff.

It’s still a quirky old beast, but it’s much improved over the versions from years ago. They finally feel good enough about the assembly workbench, UI improvements, and topo-naming mitigation to release version 1.0.

Even if you’re not a veteran, Solidworks for makers is $48/year, or $38/year through “Titans of CNC.” You get a grace zone of up to $2000 in profit before they expect you to get a non-hobbyist license, which unfortunately is quite pricy.

For comparison, Fusion only gives you $1000 of revenue, but the cheapest commercial license for them is much cheaper; basically, they just want you to buy the license once you pull in enough sales to cut them their check. OnShape has no similar scheme, forces free users’ designs to be open, AND has a clumsily worded EULA that raises a distinct possibility that other users can take your stuff and sell it, but you can’t. Solid Edge is a simple “non-commercial use” for the free tier. Alibre doesn’t do free at all, but offers a very cheap version that’s limited by features instead of license rights.

Alibre is nice. I find the workflow pretty sensible, even if (like Solid Edge) it feels like there are sometimes extra clicks. The Atom version is super cheap and still has a proper parametric history, but is nerfed in ways that might feel limiting ( e.g. no Boolean operations, which makes mold-making and some other complex work quite difficult). When I was getting frustrated with FreeCAD, I was starting to look around at subscriptions and realized if I just waited for a sale on a permanent license for their Professional version (I also did payments), it would become a better deal than Fusion or Shapr3D within about two years.

Before that I was using a copy of “BeckerCAD 14 3D Pro” that I got from its German distributor for EUR20 with some reasonable success, but in addition to some truly aged and awkward camera controls and design choices, it also lacks a parametric history.

Best I can tell, Alibre does NOT support 3mf. It supports STL, STEP, and some other single part formats though.

It’s, oh jeez, six months old by now, but back in the spring I went through all the ones I’d tried. I ultimately settled on the middle tier for Alibre, with a permanent license. Pricier than Atom, to be sure, but feature complete for any needs I can imagine for myself as an utter amateur.

https://a.lemmy.world/lemmy.world/post/13801439

I don’t know why Solid Edge doesn’t get more love. IMO it’s comparable to Fusion for basic part design, and it’s fully local.

I actually got a license for Alibre, so I’ll keep using that until my hair finishes turning gray.

I was running into some errors with the FreeCAD Appimage in Linux, but the Windows version is running fairly smoothly, and it’s finally getting enough helper prompts and heuristic interface things to be less unwieldy, but it’s still FreeCAD. For instance, I’m still trying to find the easiest of three or four kludgey ways to project a face onto a sketch, and none of them are as easy as the purpose-built tool for that in Alibre.

Hush!

And if they’d done the math wrong, they’d have landed among the stars.

Voyager has been working well for me.

Counterpoint: They already know you can’t “do” the job-specific tasks because you don’t work there yet. If you know the tools, that’s extremely helpful as they teach you what to do with them. If there’s pile A and pile B and they’re mostly the same except B already knows JIRA or Visual Studio or whatever, then that’s a legitimate differentiator.

When the existing team is forced to get new software, there’s a presumption that they already know what tasks the tools are supposed to help them do. There’s no “other pile,” so might as well suck it up and kill your productivity by ten percent for a year. It’s okay though; you can improve it by 1% from the original baseline for nine years after, because the McKinsey and Accenture people totally promised us that makes sense. Rinse and repeat.

I would like one industrial replicator, please.

I can haz cheezburger?

If anyone ever needed evidence that here at Lemmy we’re all a bunch of Gen-X olds, a zero-context Mama’s Family reference would be sufficient for summary judgment. 🤣