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We are shutting down Ondsel

(ondsel.com)
316 points pabs3 | 6 comments | 18 Nov 24 05:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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loufe ◴[18 Nov 24 11:57 UTC] No.42171647[source]▶
Every time I have a personal project and want to make a simple CAD drawing of a building or a simple model, as I would using AutoCAD at work, I go through the same song and dance. I look around at the options online, my jaw hangs open at the cost of any commercial CAD subscription/licence, then I get frustrated by a glaring lack of functionality or useability while trying some free/open source solution, and resort to a 30 day trial or MSPaint/paper.

Some of the comments already mention how blender's existence is predicated upon it filling a niche in certain senses, instead of trying to achieve feature parity with an entrenched giant. That makes sense, and it's unfortunate, as this space could use an open source option with Blender's polish. In my own industry, mining, I am certain some commercial interests would happily make their product an extension/plugin for a polished FreeCAD (or other), were it at that point.

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etimberg ◴[18 Nov 24 14:06 UTC] No.42172360[source]▶
I have a similar problem, but for electrical diagrams. I want to draw out diagrams for each of the circuits in my house and none of the free options are good enough.
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1. snake42 ◴[18 Nov 24 15:24 UTC] No.42173181[source]▶
What did you end up using?

I wanted to make diagrams for an embedded system circuit I made and ended up using PowerPoint. All of the free options seem to be focused exclusively on PCB design and not making nice graphics. Fritzing which is what a lot of people recommend is now a paid for application.

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2. etimberg ◴[18 Nov 24 15:36 UTC] No.42173339[source]▶
I haven't found anything ideal that's opensource. draw.io + some custom images for the electrical symbols lets me get good enough though
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3. ics ◴[18 Nov 24 15:45 UTC] No.42173457[source]▶
I posted and then deleted a comment as I was going to ask if you'd tried draw.io. Even when I worked in electrical design (infra+industrial), it was my go-to sketching tool to have open next to -CAD. What would you do to improve it for your use case, or are you lamenting that it isn't open source either?
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4. etimberg ◴[18 Nov 24 15:55 UTC] No.42173562{3}[source]▶
It would be perfect if the symbols I wanted were already built in. There are some electrical symbols but they're very much circuit design focused whereas I'm looking for symbols such as these https://www.edrawmax.com/templates/1011842/

Additionally, https://github.com/jgraph/drawio/issues/1660 would be a nice to have.

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5. ics ◴[18 Nov 24 16:15 UTC] No.42173810{4}[source]▶
Definitely having built-in symbols for it would be nice. Regarding a titleblock, I found that custom data attributes on symbols and page backgrounds can accomplish as much as I would even need.

Create a page in your document called "Titleblock", format it and place dummy content if desired. For each "sheet", just select it from Page Background (you can set an image, URL, or another page in the diagram). For filling out information which varies, just have one titleblock symbol and add Placeholders for the custom data attributes which you add to it as well. (See: https://www.drawio.com/blog/placeholders) This is a common workflow in CAD as well just with different terms; i.e. a linked titleblock layout used for all sheets and a block inserted into the actual drawing with the attributes filled out.

6. HeyLaughingBoy ◴[18 Nov 24 18:07 UTC] No.42175088[source]▶
Oh god, please don't use Fritzing. I absolutely despise those useless diagrams. Actually, less than useless because they're often outright misleading.

Learn to draw actual electronic schematics. It's a bit of a learning curve, but not very steep.

Use KiCad for schematics; you don't have to use the PCB design tool.