There is a reason for it:
The manufacturing industry is really conservative when it comes to software. Solidworks has been the industry standard for a long time and that prompts adoption the same way Adobe products have been the standard for the visual creative industry.
Solidworks is whitout a doubt the most powerful suite of CAD tools available if money is of no concern. With licenses for the full suite totaling near $100k. They were also the first to seamlessly integrate injection moulding simulation simulation workflows for designing plastic parts.
All of this is hardly relevant for the hobbyist or maker comunities, but it does explain why so many people in the industry tend to touch Solidworks at some point in time.
I absolutely love Solidworks, but it is hardly the most powerful program if money is no concern. Not even close. It’s bigger brother, CATIA is far more powerful but costs way the fuck more and is a mess in terms of interface and usability.
And I have no idea where you got $100k out of, but that’s ridiculously off. There are a ton of modules to pick from and yearly licensing fees, but a base package starts at roughly $3k and goes up to around $15k.
Think about where you are. Solidworks costs many thousands of dollars for a licence. FreeCAD is free. Which one do you think the vast majority of Lemmy users would use?
I mean if you think all the Solidworks users and professional CAD people are here, why don’t you make a community? We can have both things. It’s really weird how much you seem to hate FreeCAD from all your comments. Lots of us use it, and it’s growing a lot in the 3d printing community. No one is trying to make you use it at work.
Imagine if I got upset at a Python community being formed because I use SAS more at work and it has a way bigger market share in government statistics or healthcare. Do you see how weird that sounds to everyone else? Do you see why a way bigger percentage of people here, on this open source forum, are probably using and more passionate about open source python instead of closed source and crazy expensive SAS? Yes SAS has been around for way longer, has way better support, and is generally more performant (please don’t @ me python lovers - yes it can be fast, but look inside yourselves - you know it to be true), but like…there are already tons of SAS forums, and no-one uses it outside of a business context, because it’s way too expensive. Even if we were having this conversation 10 years ago when SAS had a much higher user base overall and not just in niche industries, I’m sure there would be plenty of people here who use both, and probably tons of SAS at work users, but that doesn’t eliminate the need for a Python forum. Same thing with CAD.
That’s just simply not true. We both know that. And I am not upset with FreeCAD, I just find it utterly useless. I was surprised, however, that FreeCAD had a community before SW because that was one of the first things I searched on Lemmy to see if there was a community since the one on Reddit was quite well trafficked.
If you really can’t see the point that there’s a large number of hobbyists who have zero interest in paying the licensing fees for SW, or that the fediverse community as a whole tends to heavily prefer FOSS, I’m not sure what to tell you.
Not always. Its 5-15 k € for a license with 1 year of updates. Many small companies find a way just like students do. Its just more user friendly and more powerfull. Im afraid Im too old to see foss on that level before I die, but Im sure it will get there one day.
I love the idea of 3D CAD foss on lemmy. Im gonna follow and hope it gets better and more popular
Well of course. That doesn’t mean that as a user I wouldn’t want to connect with otherSW users, see what they are up to and even answer questions that new users might have.
I just watched a tutorial video. Once I figured out how sketching works a lot of other tasks became easier to figure out and intuit.
I do think knowledge is disorganized, said knowledge is out of date and a lot of included legacy workbenches are offered which adds to initial confusion and the errors aren’t very helpful.
I use the linktree branch though. Prior to learning freecad I also worked primarily in a codeCAD library in golang which probably helped with understanding basic operations.
I haven’t found a community on Lemmy for Solidworks and there is one for freeCAD?!?
Not exactly surprising, lemmy users are pretty big on open source.
Yeah, well we all make bad decisions once in a while.
Still doesn’t explain why no Solidworks community seeing as how it’s the most used CAD program.
If you look at the community its empty.
You could…just make a solid works community, there isn’t even a reason to be jerk about freecad you’re not obligated to use it.
I’d be curious to see numbers Vs Fusion360.
F360 is at under 7%. Of course the chart that I found is a few years old.
There is a reason for it: The manufacturing industry is really conservative when it comes to software. Solidworks has been the industry standard for a long time and that prompts adoption the same way Adobe products have been the standard for the visual creative industry.
Solidworks is whitout a doubt the most powerful suite of CAD tools available if money is of no concern. With licenses for the full suite totaling near $100k. They were also the first to seamlessly integrate injection moulding simulation simulation workflows for designing plastic parts.
All of this is hardly relevant for the hobbyist or maker comunities, but it does explain why so many people in the industry tend to touch Solidworks at some point in time.
Whole lots of wrong information there.
I absolutely love Solidworks, but it is hardly the most powerful program if money is no concern. Not even close. It’s bigger brother, CATIA is far more powerful but costs way the fuck more and is a mess in terms of interface and usability.
And I have no idea where you got $100k out of, but that’s ridiculously off. There are a ton of modules to pick from and yearly licensing fees, but a base package starts at roughly $3k and goes up to around $15k.
It is? I thought Fusion 360 was.
Think about where you are. Solidworks costs many thousands of dollars for a licence. FreeCAD is free. Which one do you think the vast majority of Lemmy users would use?
Solidworks.
By far.
It owns 1/4 of the CAD market all by itself. No one, and I mean no one, who uses CAD for a living is going to waste their time with FreeCAD.
Why on earth would you think people who use CAD for a living are the target audience for either FreeCAD or a Lemmy community?
Why the fuck would you think people who use CAD wouldn’t hang out on a site like this? What kind of ridiculous assumption is that.
I mean if you think all the Solidworks users and professional CAD people are here, why don’t you make a community? We can have both things. It’s really weird how much you seem to hate FreeCAD from all your comments. Lots of us use it, and it’s growing a lot in the 3d printing community. No one is trying to make you use it at work.
Imagine if I got upset at a Python community being formed because I use SAS more at work and it has a way bigger market share in government statistics or healthcare. Do you see how weird that sounds to everyone else? Do you see why a way bigger percentage of people here, on this open source forum, are probably using and more passionate about open source python instead of closed source and crazy expensive SAS? Yes SAS has been around for way longer, has way better support, and is generally more performant (please don’t @ me python lovers - yes it can be fast, but look inside yourselves - you know it to be true), but like…there are already tons of SAS forums, and no-one uses it outside of a business context, because it’s way too expensive. Even if we were having this conversation 10 years ago when SAS had a much higher user base overall and not just in niche industries, I’m sure there would be plenty of people here who use both, and probably tons of SAS at work users, but that doesn’t eliminate the need for a Python forum. Same thing with CAD.
That’s just simply not true. We both know that. And I am not upset with FreeCAD, I just find it utterly useless. I was surprised, however, that FreeCAD had a community before SW because that was one of the first things I searched on Lemmy to see if there was a community since the one on Reddit was quite well trafficked.
If you really can’t see the point that there’s a large number of hobbyists who have zero interest in paying the licensing fees for SW, or that the fediverse community as a whole tends to heavily prefer FOSS, I’m not sure what to tell you.
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I would also argue that the majority of CAD users use it for work. Work pays for the license.
Not always. Its 5-15 k € for a license with 1 year of updates. Many small companies find a way just like students do. Its just more user friendly and more powerfull. Im afraid Im too old to see foss on that level before I die, but Im sure it will get there one day.
I love the idea of 3D CAD foss on lemmy. Im gonna follow and hope it gets better and more popular
Well of course. That doesn’t mean that as a user I wouldn’t want to connect with otherSW users, see what they are up to and even answer questions that new users might have.
People just starting out might. Especially if they don’t get liscensed from their schools or jobs.
FreeCAD is way too complicated to pick up compared to other options, IMO, but they’ve always had a strong and loyal community
I just watched a tutorial video. Once I figured out how sketching works a lot of other tasks became easier to figure out and intuit.
I do think knowledge is disorganized, said knowledge is out of date and a lot of included legacy workbenches are offered which adds to initial confusion and the errors aren’t very helpful.
I use the linktree branch though. Prior to learning freecad I also worked primarily in a codeCAD library in golang which probably helped with understanding basic operations.
Do you think a majority of us in the 3d printing community use CAD at work or something?
Id like to see solidworks community on lemmy
Or oven better CAD modeling community.