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Had this aluminum plate laser cut a few months back and hand-wired it with Box Navies and a RPi Pico, and oiled oak for the sides. I missed my numpad, though, so I used my own laser cutter and made an
  • @Reverendender

    I am in the US, so Xometry was pretty economical for my needs. I had three top and three bottom plates cut from 1.5mm 5052 aluminum for $67 total, tax and (free) shipping included. I added in a laser kerf on the swillkb plate generator that probably wasn't needed, as the switches are in there VERY snug. If you were doing a plate for hand-wiring, that's not a bad thing, actually. If you need one to mate with a PCB, I'd consider leaving it off, but it could have been the specific shop or really anything. There is a bit of luck involved in this process, which is basically a crude form of prototyping.

  • What's a candy that's practically crack for you?
  • Costco used to (still does?) sell these tubs of chocolate covered caramel macadamia nut clusters. Literally food of the diabetic gods. I had to stop buying them because they were expensive AF and disappeared way too quickly.

  • The Biggest Box Office Bombs of 2023
  • It was better than Crystal Skull because it didn't quite so explicitly sci-fi the magic, the set pieces were a little better, and Helena was less annoying than Mutt, but both movies are sort of equally useless, and openly depressed Indy was VERY depressing. The character always had some undiagnosed mental health issues pushing him towards unhealthy risk-taking, but Mangold's Indy just made me sad.

  • Sword-wielding man attacks passersby in London, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring 4 others
  • King Charles III said his thoughts and prayers were with the family of the young victim, and he saluted the courage of emergency workers, Buckingham Palace said.

    "King Charles III" still sounds so weird to me. The last story I ran across with his name in it was about either Ireland or Scotland, I can't remember which, and it took me longer than I care to admit to realize it wasn't some sly Jacobite comment.

  • Had this aluminum plate laser cut a few months back and hand-wired it with Box Navies and a RPi Pico, and oiled oak for the sides. I missed my numpad, though, so I used my own laser cutter and made an
  • @RustyNova

    I’m not sure where it will live long term, but “southpaw” numpads are definitely a thing. They allow for mousing while doing data entry, and they mitigate one of the reasons some people do without numpads by allowing the shoulders to stay more neutral when the mouse is close to the right edge of the keyboard.

  • Had this aluminum plate laser cut a few months back and hand-wired it with Box Navies and a RPi Pico, and oiled oak for the sides. I missed my numpad, though, so I used my own laser cutter and made an

    Had this aluminum plate laser cut a few months back and hand-wired it with Box Navies and a RPi Pico, and oiled oak for the sides. I missed my numpad, though, so I used my own laser cutter and made an external one from Masonite and textured spraypaint.

    \#DIY #MechanicalKeyboard

    \#mechanicalkeyboards

    4
    What's the best pun name you've ever heard?
  • Don't you mean Annie Mail?

  • Our ancestors may have kept foxes as pets long before domestic dogs came on the scene
  • A fox of the same species was found in a much older grave in another part of Argentina nearly a decade ago. It may also have been a pet but its diet was not analysed.

    As usual, it's more the article (and especially the headline) than the science. Here is the Abstract of the study.

    It's much more about the specific burial and the inferences that can be reasonably drawn about South America before the introduction of dogs from the north 5k years ago. It references multiple burials with non-dog canids from across time periods in S.A., including at least one from about 4k years ago, as well as many other remains scattered in with human burials. It seems to build on existing theorizing that pre-Columbian practices might have changed more slowly than post. Then there are the statistical arguments. If you occasionally find a fox in human burials, based on the number of human burials you didn't find, you can feel pretty confident that there were more foxes buried with humans.

  • Ted Cruz Is Getting Nervous He's Going to Lose His Senate Seat
  • I fear that he's going to under-perform his party, but still squick out a win. People dislike him almost universally, but the GOP folks who don't respect him can still count on his vote and they know that he will kiss the ring to keep his job.

    Also, I've decided "squick" is probably a good verb to use for most things that Ted Cruz does.

  • Do the "Ernest needs to add more maintainers to KBin!" comments remind anyone else of the xz social engineering malarkey?
  • Yes, there is some similarity. You're not wrong.

    However, it's much more likely to be due to the common experience of solo devs whose projects blow up than it is about bad actors on kbin.

    If you're so inclined, you can always check the profiles of those who were pushing for it and particularly those who were volunteering; the boehs.org link should supply some helpful red flags to look for. Ernest would be wise to check IP activity and even ask for IRL credentials of those he would consider giving any real level of access to. Beyond that, it's firmly in the realm of "mildly interesting."

  • Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform
  • I'm kinda sad to see it enshittify, for gamers and for those who find it fits their actual collaboration use case, but I also really hate the number forum-format communities that Discord has displaced or prevented from coalescing. Discoverability on Discord is terrible, as is having help available long term, as well as older advice and other content that helps newbies get the culture of a community. Even where the functionality exists, the general "real time" transitory feel of it reduces the quality of content and encourages people to be dicks, since it will all scroll by or be forgotten (if streaming) in a few moments anyway.

    Horses for courses, and my old-ass X-ennial self thinks Discord has been pressed into service on a lot of courses where it's terrible.

  • Got a new windows 98 gaming PC, and boi she's huge!!
  • Ha! I used it TWICE!

    Also, to OP, that definitely wouldn't have come OEM on a PC that shipped with Win 98.

  • Would you think of words that you don't know, ending with "phile" as something sexual (or negative)?
  • Mine are the remnants of a vacuum cleaner power cord. There's a lot of copper there, and a lot of rubber between them.

  • The Affinity and Canva Pledge
  • This all feels a lot like any low- or mid-range CAD suite that gets acquired by Autodesk, Siemens, or PTC. Promise enough to avoid a revolt, but start eroding with the next release.

    The educational licensing for lock-in is also par for the course. It can be done well (Rhino 3D is legendary for letting small-shop designers use their cheap edu license forever, even commercially), but generally it's just there to maintain the supply of baby drafters and get subscriptions from employers.

  • Keycap sets for numpad
  • Well, those are standard MX compatible switches. No big deal to find keycaps, but selection of numpad-only sets is more limited. Any idea what you want, style wise? Do you only want GMK or Signature Plastics or Drop, or are random sets and clones from Amazon/AliExpress okay?

    Some of the higher end stuff will sell numpad only, generally for way less than the base kit (to wit...), but a really cheap set will cost the same for the full set, or even potentially a good bit less if you go bargain hunting and aren't picky.

  • Clemson sues ACC
  • Anything that results in less Dabo Swinney in the world is probably not entirely bad.

  • How many times have you pooped your pants as an adult? What were the situations you were in when that happened?
  • Twice that I recall, both while at least mildly ill. Once, in law school, I was late to class and had an assigned seat in the middle of a row, so I was not keen to draw further attention to myself, but I had a rumbly tummy and the bowel wants what it wants. Eventually, despite what felt to me like truly heroic efforts, I did in fact excuse myself, only to find that floor's bathroom was closed. going down a flight of stairs does things to your regular clenching pressure, and by the time I made it to the toilet, "slug of poo" had made its way into my boxers. Damage to the undies was surprisingly mild, but I went ahead and called it a day for the rest of my classes, as I had skipped many times for far less legitimate reasons.

    The other time I was just home with the shits and didn't quite make it once. Afterwards I moved my "I'm sick" nest a lot closer to the bathroom for the rest of the day.

  • What’s caught your interest lately?
  • Any tips on the offending glasses? I live in the path of totality, and I don't want to blind my kid.

  • What’s caught your interest lately?
  • Because I can? LOL.

    I do try to make to make boards with layouts that are slightly unique from anything I could buy, just to lie to myself and pretend that I "have to" make them. Latest kick, which simplifies construction in a couple of ways, is making boards that have no key wider than 1.75 "regular" ones. Means I have more real estate to play with and don't need the notoriously noisy "stabilizer" hardware.

    The kind of soldering you do with a handwire is also sort of relaxing, like tying fishing flies, except you burn your finger every once in a while.

  • What’s caught your interest lately?
  • Yes, that's probably about perfect. There are a few human deaths, occasionally with a fair amount of blood, though it's fairly stylized, and part of the lore involves the banal commonness of resurrection spells, so I doubt it would be too traumatizing for a teen. The rest of the gore is non-humans and often almost more like a particularly unflinching cooking show.

    There's only a little bit of "nudity," and it's thoroughly PG-13. Then the character interactions and themes are pretty gentle overall, though I guess there's some realpolitik trouble brewing with some of the supporting characters.

  • What’s caught your interest lately?
  • Well put, and you have a well-chosen user name. :-)

  • As college football's elite is engulfed in a power struggle, G5 left just trying to survive: 'We are a farm system'
    As college football's elite is engulfed in a power struggle, G5 left just trying to survive: 'We are a farm system'

    Interesting insight into how NIL and free transfers have combined (and only the combination could have done it) to wreak havoc on the G5, and to some extent up and down the chain. Seems the biggest schools are even cobbling together NIL packages for "walk-ons" that mysteriously cover the cost of attendance.

    > > > “They’ve got to make up what a scholarship covers. I get it. It’s smart,” Chadwell said. “But the NCAA needs to create a rule requiring players to sit out a year if they are not on full academic scholarship.” > >

    But as always, this is where they lose me. Limiting player movement without compensation is never the answer. Either you're a student and this an extracurricular and anything you do or anywhere you go between seasons is your own goddamn business (even you Trevor fucking Etienne, even you, traitor), or you deserve material consideration for limiting your own mobility during your prime developmental years and/or your last chance to play a game you love competitively.

    8
    Just finished up this one. No-stabilizers, handwired custom 98% layout. 3D printed case and feet, plate laser cut from 3.2mm Masonite, blank XDA laser dye-subbed in a Josefin Sans Medium font. Not

    Just finished up this one. No-stabilizers, handwired custom 98% layout. 3D printed case and feet, plate laser cut from 3.2mm Masonite, blank XDA laser dye-subbed in a Josefin Sans Medium font. Not exactly professional fit and finish, but it types nice with Box Jades, and ZERO STAB RATTLE! ZERO!!!

    Pic 1

    Pic 2

    Pic 3

    \#mechanicalkeyboard #mechanicalkeyboards

    2
    FreeCAD, Ondsel and Prusa Save FOSDEM!
    blog.freecad.org FreeCAD, Ondsel and Prusa Save FOSDEM!

    With credit to xkcd for the original "Dependency" cartoon FOSDEM is an organisational masterpiece. The infrastructure and logistics of thousands of opensource people amassing around 59 stands and 9…

    FreeCAD, Ondsel and Prusa Save FOSDEM!

    TP is essential.

    19
    SEC, Big Ten 'advisory group' stands as coded threat to NCAA: Figure it out, or we'll go off ourselves

    I think the restructuring is going to take a while yet, but moves like this probably do signal the end of the beginning.

    I haven't looked yet, but I wonder if it would be possible to find news stories and opinion pieces for other watershed moments, like when the Ivies formally dropped athletic scholarships or when the D1-A/D1-AA split happened. There was a great Texas Monthly article from the 70s where UT was already moaning about the rest of the SWC, and while it focused on gameday revenue, it looks prescient in hindsight.

    1
    A weirdo tries some major CAD suites, but also a bunch of half-baked bizarre free CAD program out there...

    TL;DR: I tried lots of CAD stuff with an eye towards someday being able to commercialize designs. F360 would be great if I could trust Autodesk. Solid Edge, Solidworks, and Onshape all have issues too. I want to make myself like FreeCAD. Some other options like Alibre are interesting, and many get weeeeird.

    I don't make particularly sophisticated designs, but I'm eager to learn, and I have delusions that I might one day stumble across a design that once fabricated could end up making me a few bucks (Narrator: he was mistaken). I'm certainly not there yet, but my other hobby is being a cheap-ass and a contrarian, so for the last few weeks I've been hunting for every weird free CAD program I can find, plus one weird but heavily discounted one, plus several free trials. Lately, I've been making my go-to quickie design to test basic part functionality in a lot of different programs, which I will discuss, but as a mostly-former lawyer, I've also been thinking about license terms and paths to small-scale commercialization. Haven't actually pulled the trigger yet on paying for anything, with one exception because it barely counts. Notably missing will be Code-to-CAD options like OpenSCAD. I have a couple of them, and I have dabbled in PHP, Python, Pascal, and BASIC over the decades, but my brain just doesn't "see" in code.

    The sample part is generally along these lines: a rectangle, ellipse, and circle, trimmed to be one sketch, one corner with a 2D fillet, then extruded. After, I put a fillet on the top surface and a chamfer on the bottom. Then I punch a hole through the side and fillet and/or chamfer the openings. This does a helpful number of basic things in very little time. If 2d is constraint based, it shows me how those work. I also see how you set up a working plane on a face and how aggressive the filleting can be, particularly where the ellipsoids meet the rectangle at a rather sharp angle. Basically, it tells me, "Can this program be used at all for basic design for 3D printing?" All very newbie and idiosyncratic, but maybe it will help someone and spur discussion.

    So, without further ado, here are some thoughts:

    • Big time (by hobbyist standards):

    Fusion 360: Parametric. Loads slow, but it works. The part designs fine. Ten part limit could easily become annoying if I start doing assemblies, but for the moment it's a rather fair compromise, since a simple toggle reactivates a file. Filleting is really robust for the curves; it tries to accommodate crazy design choices. I kind of hate how much I like it, because I hate the feature erosion, and the price creep to avoid that, that Autodesk has been doing. Still, as subscriptions go it's not terrible at the $400-$600/year mark. That raises another point, which is that it would be one of the easiest to navigate a hobby to side-hustle ("H2SH") transition, since the price is not insane and the $1000 revenue limit on the free tier is chintzy but exists. It also works almost perfectly with the serial port(!) Spaceball I bought off ebay, with only button customization no longer working.

    Solid Edge Community Edition: Parametric. The interface does some unintuitive things compared to F360, but after a bit of wrestling, it started to click, and there's a search box for tools; that's actually super thoughtful. Ultimately, the part designed fine, and Siemens' strategy to nerf is a little different than Autodesk's. Instead of removing features, they simply refuse to let you open CE version files in the commercial version, and I believe the opposite way permanently converts that copy of the big-boy file. The other issue here is the licensing. There is no ramp-up like with F360. You make money, you need commercial. That said, the subscription is pricy at \~$1000us per year but not insane.

    Solidworks Maker Edition: Parametric. I HAVE NOT TRIED IT YET. I assume it can do everything I would want and more. The Maker edition is not terribly priced, and I believe the Titans of CNC deal gets it down to around $50 a year versus the $100 regular price. The old EAA discount is not as good these days, I understand. There are a few things holding me back. First, gotta pay up front, as I understand the fully online version is kind of crap, but as far as I can tell that's what the free trial gets you. Second, I gather the 3dExperience Licensing portal leverages a robust but non-intuitive commercial PDM system, so even logging in and launching the desktop version is challenging with the current products, and people seem to universally despise it. Third, it seems like Dassault has no clear strategy for this market segment and the version could go away, which is a problem because, fourth, there is a huge donut hole in the licensing scheme. Maker edition is super cheap, and actually has a fairly generous H2SH cushion of $2000 profit. I am not sure I'd ever get past that even if I did accidentally make something a few people thought was cool, but if one were to manage it, there is nowhere to go except apply for the startup program, which requires legal formalities. The next step up is just the full, multi-thousand/year commercial license. That tends to leave it less desirable than SE or F360, for this particular scenario.

    OnShape: Parametric and online. I want to like it. The part designed pretty well actually, though it gave up on compound fillets much quicker than F360 or SE, but it's certainly usable. The online only part is potentially annoying, but I'm not doing CAD at a cabin in the mountains (some do... much respect), but it's also an advantage, as this leaves OnShape working perfectly in Linux in this notoriously Windows-centric category of software. The way they have the full screen browser window actually looks a lot like a "real" app. I found it at least as responsive as F360. The bigger issue here is, again, pricing and licensing. Free is great; I don't love that the designs are public, but whatever; I'm much more likely to use CAD to make a thing worth selling than a file worth selling. The licensing problem is that while I am barred from commercially using my files, by the terms of use, NO ONE ELSE IS. They specifically grant users the right to do anything they want with other people's files, including sell them. It's kinda bullshit, actually, and I've had a polite but unproductive exchange with their legal department about it. Pricing-wise, it's not quite Solidworks, but there's a donut hole in their market segmentation; for a less mature product than SE, you have to jump straight from free to $1500/year.

    NX and Illustrator and Creo Parametric. Didn't try them. Few/any license discounts, and it's clear that the corporate parents view other offerings as filling this niche.

    • The "B" team

    FreeCAD: Parametric and open source. First off, I'm better with it than I was even a few weeks ago, and to a certain extent, it should simply BE the answer. It's free for any use and it's a proper parametric modeler. It works as well on my Kubuntu laptop as it does on my Windows desktop. As my understanding has increased, I'm more aware of why it does certain things, and what an impressive piece of software it is to work at all comparably to some of the commercial packages. I haven't personally hit a wall with topological naming or had any significant crashes, but I'm still kind of playing and not working and reworking any projects. The sample part designed reasonably easily, but similar to OnShape it's more hesitant about balls-to-the-wall fillets, giving up as soon as any two edges' fillets touch (edit: anywhere except the expected vertex, that is). FreeCAD is more persnickety about sketches and constraints, though less than I used to think. Overall there is still a general sense of "We've only just barely got this thing holding together, so don't get cute." It "enforces good design" by not working well if you don't learn its definition of good design. There are also still a lot of QoL issues with the GUI and no real attempt to bring in influences and widgets from direct modeling. FreeCAD is pure of heart and pure of thought, but I'm not sure I'm quite there, though I can at least imagine it now, and I will never not have it installed. One additional plus, a simple Serial-USB adapter is enough to get the eBay Spaceball working on linux.

    Alibre Design: Parametric. I've just about wrapped up my free trial, and while it's got its own quirks, I like it. I mostly used Atom, the lowest tier, and while the interface looks a little dated, it's a sort of "Clean" dated, and it's fine. The sketching and extruding works fine. Like FreeCAD, it divides additive from subtractive operations, but again, that's not a deal breaker. Subscription prices are pretty reasonable, which is good, because while Atom3D is nice and extremely cheap at $150 permanent with no updates ($200 with one year's worth) or $100/year, it lacks all Boolean operations. You absolutely have to figure out a way to get your sketch extruded or revolved to get the shape you want. Maybe I've played with direct modelers too long, but my goodness that's a beatdown. Luckily, the next step up is still fairly reasonable at $700 permanent ($350 for 1yr updates) or $300 yearly subscription, and it includes booleans, some direct modeling, and quite a few other features. This one is kind of a contender, but the question is always, "how much better is it than FreeCAD?" Also, there is no free plan. Trial, then pay or delete.

    Shapr3D: Direct for now, Parametric in beta. I only played around in the non-beta for a bit, as I already have a direct modeler. The parametric constraints are a little hit and miss, and there are still odd little incompletions in an otherwise polished app. For instance, 2D fillets must be done manually with arc and trim. Still, the UI has evolved nicely out of its iPad origins and the organization on screen is pretty nice. The iOS heritage also shows with the pricing, where the free tier is completely hobbled by not even exporting usable STLs, but the subscription is pretty modestly priced at $300/year. One to watch for desktop, and probably already a good option if you work on iOS or prefer direct modeling.

    Plasticity: Direct (and proud!), has Linux version. I let my free trial expire without robustly testing it, but it was sort of exactly what is claims to be. A direct modeler that works a lot like Blender and is more than happy to fillet the hell out of anything. I understand a parametric history tree and constraints-based drafting are not really part of the roadmap, so that direct modeling concept would need to be what you're after. It's also a one-man show, so burnout or taking a "real job" is a distinct possibility, but the price is good at $150 for a permanent license with a year of updates.

    (EDIT) Rhino: I didn't try, but probably should have. A bit more expensive than Alibre or BricsCAD, but permanent licenses that don't price out small business are available.

    • Also-rans

    TinkerCAD: Direct and different, online. You CAN do more with it than people like to imply, but the paradigm of groups and solids and holes is way weird compared to mainstream CAD software. Still, it's really intuitive to those coming from some other background. Woodworking for instance. It's basically, "Here is a thing. I can glue it to other things. I can also make holes in things." The alignment and cloning options remind me a little bit of apps like Inkscape, and that's not necessarily a bad thing either, but it's not quite scalable. Also no built-in fillets and chamfers, and that's really what pushed my out of its loving embrace.

    SolveSpace: Parametric and open-source. Imagine if Freecad were distilled down to its part design workbench, and equipped with literally the bare minimum of tools to make an arbitrary solid, its own utterly unique (AFAIK) paradigm on how to interface with things, and with barebones presentation, yet somehow the whole was more than the sum of its parts. Following along with a SolveSpace tutorial is actually kind of fun. If they figure out a way to shoehorn fillets and chamfers in, it could be a real factor in the hobbyist space. Using construction geometry and booleans to soften every single edge is not my idea of productivity, however (see also TinkerCAD).

    Designspark Mechanical: Direct Modeling. Aww, man, I wanted so much to like this one, and I guess in some ways I still do, but it can be frustrating. It's a downscaled version of Ansys Spaceclaim, probably the best known professional app that's specifically for Direct Modeling. The free tier is licensed for commercial use, which is extremely rare. The only thing is, they have absolutely nerfed it as far as interoperability. You can import absolutely nothing CAD-native that isn't from Designspark, and while you can export printable STLs, that's about it. You also can't mirror features, which depnding on workflow might double your work. Now, on the flip side, the next tier up is a very reasonable $145/year, and it opens up the import/export and mirror functions. The other thing is that being designed as a direct modeler, most of the traditional functions are bundled up into the push/pull tool, and it can feel a bit claustrophobic; you also have to remember to space/tab into your measurement, or it will just assume you want to wing it. Parametric modeling is not quite the end-all be-all for the lone wolf designer doing one-offs that it would be for a production shop, but I'm not even sure DSM is top tier at that. For decent commercial software, though, it's quite cheap, and poking around the forums, it seems like you'd be fine to buy a single month of subscription to mess with your parts, since whatever it allowed you to do in the free tier is already fine to use commercially. Finally, there's a new feature for constraint-based 2D sketching, but those sketches are still consumed (i.e. they are integrated in as the edges of the extrusion and can no longer be edited once in 3D). This is a half measure, but with some forethought and careful saving/version control, it could get you halfway to a parametric modeler.

    BricsCAD: Parametric. Okay, I admit it, I had an initial impression that Alibre was easier to use than this fork of an old AutoCAD (though I understand it's the nicest of such forks, and better than the various IntelliCAD packages), so I let the free trial sit there until it expired and now I only have BricsCAD Shape. BricsCAD looked fine, and critically it has a Linux version and offers perpetual licensing, but the licenses and subscriptions are all 50% or so more than equivalents from Alibre.

    • Off the beaten path

    BricsCAD Shape: Direct, should have Linux version, but I haven't checked. Meant to take on Sketchup, and to be the free inducement to download the entire BricsCAD package. There's some power left here, as it's clearly just BricsCAD with various features turned off, but man I was having trouble doing sketch and extrude modeling, which is starting to feel more comfortable than placing primitives. You can do good stuff with this, but do more than the BIM-light sketchup clone they have marketed it as, there are some serious teeth to be pulled, including some stuff that ought to be simple requiring the console bar. You also have to do some things manually, like rejoin your lines into a poly-line that can be extruded into a solid. There's some there there, but frankly for general purpose modeling FreeCAD is a lot better Like many apps, it doesn't like to go crazy on compound fillets with acute angles, crapping out after a very gentle blend.

    Salome Shaper/Open Cascade CADBuilder: Parametric and Open source. So here's one. It is not strictly a "CAD" program so much as it is the parts bench of a Finite Element Analysis package. I'm a liberal arts major, but I gather that it converts the part into a mesh (like an STL) and does various science shit with it (okay, I know a little more than that, but not much). So, you do need decent models for FEA, and a few years ago Salome rolled out a fully parametric part designer. It's comparable to the Part Design workbench in FreeCAD, and I think the default theme and icons look a little nicer, but it clearly shares a lot of code and basically it acts exactly like FreeCAD, except without the drawing and fabrication features, and it's a ginormous download that's a pain in the ass to install on Linux (easier on Windows). If you have it for some other reason, you should feel good about it, as it's not half-bad, but there's just not much point in getting it specifically to design for 3D printing. Oh, and then OpenCascade, the company that makes the 3d kernel used in FreeCAD, KiCAD, Salome, etc., lifted the Shaper module, half-assedly threw a ribbon interface on it, and compiled it for Windows as a proof of concept/sales tool that they controlled. It's okay, because it is Salome Shaper, but it's pointless and even more pointlessly, it's Windows only.

    Creo Elements/Direct Modeling Express: Direct. The red-headed stepchild at Creo. It's free for any use, easier to use than BricsCAD shape, and makes an okay part. It also hasn't been updated in 4 years, has extremely limited export options, and I'm pretty sure they literally turned off the license server, so you can only use it by waiting for the request to time-out, ignoring the suggestion you might be behind a proxy, then clicking a button to open a webpage that gives you a 72-hour license key. I get the feeling it's on borrowed time. Points for still supporting the serial Spaceball. :-)

    • Just a little bit of what dafuq

    NaroCAD: Parametric, open source. Development stopped, doesn't really work at all, but that doesn't stop some asshole from trying to sell copies on eBay.

    SelfCAD: Direct, online option. I just can't figure what they're offering that is better than a million different freemium models. Clumsy interface, but too weird to appeal to the total beginner. The only real benefit I see is that its free tier allows commercial use and its paid tiers are fairly cheap, though I'd grab DesignSpark or Alibre over this any day.

    Form Z Free: Direct. No fillets or chamfers in free version. Full version is old fashioned and expensive. Seems like it's a small time operation just trying to hang onto its customer base. BricsCAD Shape and Creo Express are way better.

    BRLCAD: Direct, CSG modeling, open source. I noped out after about 5 minutes. I am not a tormented E4 fresh out of Army drafting school with a head full of lies about how I'm learning valuable work skills, so I don't have to endure this.

    gCAD3D: Is this real life?

    BeckerCAD 14 - 3D Pro: Direct. Okay, so finally, here is the one I DID buy, for the whopping sum of $22, from a German shovelware site. I am pretty sure it was accidentally on sale for the price normally used for the non "Pro" version or maybe even the 2D version, and it's since gone back up to an unrecommendable $130 or so. The main claim to fame is that a couple of versions back, it was in a single HumbleBundle, and that led to a few reddit posts and one dude reviewing it on his blog. Here's what I can glean from the interwebs, including Goggle translating German CAD forums. It seems that years and years ago, there was a 2D CAD program that was modestly successful in Germany, but eventually it was outcompeted. The branding was scooped up by the shovelware company, MuT, but they needed working software to sell. So it seems they licensed an AutoCAD-like software called CADdy++, developed by a different small German company. The 2D module became BeckerCAD 2D, the full "Beginner" version of CADdy++ became 3D pro, and a few options were turned off to create the "3D". It's old, and it's quirky AF, but it uses ACIS, and the non-beginner tiers of CADdy++ are fully parametric, so there are "good bones" buried in the poorly translated menus. It uses a weird paradigm of of box-selecting everything with various built in filters, like there is the button for select-add, the button for select-remove, and the button for select-toggle, all in pride of place on the toolbar. Sketches are not constrained, though you can label them for actual drawing purposes with various constraints. Sketches are not tied to the solids after extrusion, but they also aren't consumed, so they can be revisited if the solid needs to be redone. The main place it shows its age/questionable provenance is with camera navigation, which best I can tell requires a hotkey, which I've mapped to a spare mouse button. Export options aren't great, but STL and various other meshes suitable for printing are in there, and you can export SAT files, which with one add-on, FreeCAD can import and save to STEP. Import is worse, though, where SAT is the only non-mesh CAD format supported, and writing those is a little trickier than reading them. Still, it's certainly been worth what I paid.

    eMachineshop "CAD": Basically an interactive order form, but I did learn a little about sheet metal forming.

    63
    Farewell to Another College Football Season

    It's an understandably emotional time for the college football as we lay to rest another season. Michigan wears the crown for the first time since 1997, Alab...

    0
    SEC Shorts - The Big 10 beats the SEC

    > > > Bob and Steve from the Big Ten Show are back to gloat as their conference demonstrates that it is clearly better than the SEC in all facets of the game. > >

    3
    Mizzou's Eli Drinkwitz makes case for changing college football's December schedule
    sports.yahoo.com Mizzou's Eli Drinkwitz makes case for changing college football's December schedule

    Mizzou coach Eli Drinkwitz and Ohio State coach Ryan Day were on the same team when discussing potential changes to college football's busiest month.

    Mizzou's Eli Drinkwitz makes case for changing college football's December schedule

    Mizzou coach Eli Drinkwitz and Ohio State coach Ryan Day were on the same team when discussing potential changes to college football's busiest month.

    1
    Florida State has sued the ACC, setting the stage for a fight to leave over revenue concerns
    www.nbcsports.com Florida State has sued the ACC, setting the stage for a fight to leave over revenue concerns

    The lawsuit was filed soon after in Leon County Circuit Court, claiming the ACC has mismanaged its media rights and is imposing “draconian” exit fees.

    Florida State has sued the ACC, setting the stage for a fight to leave over revenue concerns

    Apparently the white sands of the Florida panhandle are 100% salt.

    > > > The lawsuit was filed soon after in Leon County Circuit Court, claiming the ACC has mismanaged its media rights and is imposing “draconian” exit fees. > >

    0
    wjrii wjrii @kbin.social
    Posts 112
    Comments 1.3K