I used it once or twice to open an existing .step file just to know if I was exporting it correctly from KiCad.
Speaking of KiCad, I am convincing lots of people to move from EAGLE to it now that EAGLE is about to be killed by AutoDesk, and everyone seem to be having a good time.
I am hoping FreeCAD can become good to the point I can convince people to move to it too.
KiCad is frustrating because it’s actually good enough to make a lot of models but it’s just unfriendly enough to make it take way too long to do… but it’s also still way easier than learning how to do it in a full-featured cad program.
I would kill for something like KiCad with more refined controls.
I wish KiCad had a constraint solver built-in for defining footprints and placing some key parts of a PCB. A better library management system would also be nice. That aside, I think their interactive router is pretty great, and a huge improvement over older versions. I first tried KiCad in 2016 or 2017 and routing traces was pretty dire, especially if you had to redo them for whatever reason.
I can second Horizon EDA. It's not perfect, but it has the good KiCAD kernel without the abysmal UX.
FreeCAD may also be good - it's the only other one I haven't tried.
On the other hand if you're convincing EAGLE users to move they'll probably be happy with KiCAD because they're already used to an even worse UX, as if such a thing were possible.
Autodesk should have started their own ECAD from scratch. They have mountains of CAD know-how in house. Their acquisition of EAGLE did nobody any favors.
I am not sad to see it go. The only ones I know of who used to use EAGLE were those who got hooked on it when it was either free or the cheapest option for hobbyists and small businesses. It didn't win any UI/UX competitions, certainly not against the joy that is modern programs for solid CAD.
> I'm constantly surprised at how many cultural conventions are mysteries to modern generations.
Some of my law students are only dimly aware of Jerry Seinfeld. And when I play a bit of the organ solo from Procul Harum's 1967 Whiter Shade of Pale (to illustrate a copyright-royalties point), I'm lucky if one person recognizes it.
It’s often surprising what we discover younger people have no idea about. I had a twenty-something co-worker in 2018 who was a self-professed aficionado of submarine movies who had never seen Yellow Submarine (I can’t remember now if he’d heard of it at least or if even that was beyond his ken). My profile picture on my gmail account is a picture of Harpo Marx because I occasionally use Harpo as a nickname thanks to my first name having become undesirable a decade ago and I had a recruiter that I was working with ask me who the picture was, apparently having never seen a Marx brothers movie or even heard of them.
I still remember (years ago now) my coworker telling
me her family stayed in a motel on a trip and her children asking her how the phone worked. They had never seen a dial phone before and when asked, tried putting their finders in and out the holes to see if that would dial.
There was a somewhat lame Kevin Kline/Tom Selleck movie, called In and Out (1997), where one of the characters is this vacuous model (Shalom Harlow), who tries using a dial phone in that manner.
Definitely more of a luxury exercise. A sort of zoo with even more researchers and administrators watching over
Id personally put that money into fighting the Pine Beatles which at this moment are killing huge swathes of existing wildlife and ecosystems. But that’s hard laborious work.
Devereaux wrote that series in large part in response to all the people going "gosh, modern life is just so much worse than medieval peasants!"
But honestly, even if you're comparing to the richest kings of the time, your median modern person has a better life. People seriously underestimate just how much of our modern life would be unattainable luxury in the Medieval period.
> even if you're comparing to the richest kings of the time, your median modern person has a better life
And the question I always ask when people make this claim - now would you rather be a median modern person or one of the richest kings of the medieval era? It emphasizes that there's far more unquantifiables to having a good life than there are quantifiables, yet we almost entirely socially neglect them.
I remember a study from many years ago: people want to be better off than their immediate peers, regardless of where this puts them on an absolute scale.
The study went something like this. Which do you prefer? 1. You earn $250k but all your friends earn $500k. 2. You earn $125k, but all your friends earn $75k.
It was more refined then that, but anyway: most people picked (2).
I'm also familiar with that study, but I think it's a bit misleading because it implies the behavior is irrational by associating a fixed cost with everything. In reality, there's a perfectly rational logic that I think most people may subconsciously adapt to.
Imagine I give you a guaranteed $100k/year with the nuance that you're not allowed to earn any money beyond that, as the study implied that was your personal earnings. Where are you going to go live? In an area where most people are earning $200k or in an area where most people are earning $50k? It's the exact same question in effect, but now the phrasing makes it obvious that the choice is completely rational.
It's not about wanting to psychologically dominate your peers, but about making your money go further. If your friends are all earning twice what you do, then you're likely to struggle to afford even a decent house in a reasonable part of town. This logic breaks down at extremes of wealth, but $250k/year is nowhere near that point.
I replied here [2] to an essentially identical question. Basically, it comes down to a question - what do you want out of life? And are you going to be more able to achieve that as e.g. a king, or as somebody earning $45k a year in the US (the current median personal income)?
And again, it feels very obvious to me that the median modern life is better than a king in the Middle Ages. Unless your interests are leading a short hedonistic life being controlled by your court and meeting a violent end. But I don’t think most people would value that.
Going with what I said in the other post - I would like to: have a large family, plenty of social relations, and the ability to play a role in shaping the future of society. Am I more likely to be able to achieve this as a king, or as somebody in the US earning $45k/year? For that matter I can't really think of anything that would be easier as somebody earning $45k a year in the US. What are your aspirations in life?
Global median is pretty good - out of poverty even by modern standards. And antibiotics and other medical care are definitely a large factor here, as well as the general safety that comes from living in a state with laws.
What do you want out of life? Personally I am striving to have a large family, plenty of social relations, and would really like to have some ability to play a role in shaping the future of society. As a medieval king you have these to the point of absurdity.
In modern times? The median personal income (US only) is $45k. [1] That's something that's very easy to forget, especially on a forum like this. And at that income, doing anything, besides accumulating meaningless gadgets, will be a challenge. Even having children, the most fundamentally critical responsibility for a society to sustain itself, is a challenge. I don't think the skyrocketing rates of psychological, mental, and other disorders is simply a coincidence.
We've created a dysfunctional and unsustainable society. This can still be quite a nice place when you're way above the median, but the median lifestyle is going to be quite unpleasant. It's certainly not a lifestyle I would ever even consider preferring over that of a medieval king.
Finding Cadquery less of a hurdle for casual use. Wish I could run it from Termux though.
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