Inkscape! It's open source and uses the open SVG format. It's vector based but can handle bitmaps too. You can set a grid on the background and set different units of measurement.

It sounds a lot like "Generative Design", which is already used widely. So it would be a great addition.

For ergonomics study a "motion envelope" of the limbs would be nice to have

This could be a very interesting tool for reversed engineering. A feature recognition from scanned 3d data?

FreeCAD is a very complex piece of software and without documentation is difficult to acquire enough skills to modify his "internals", maybe you could code some macro, or "high level" programs that use FreeCAD as the "modeling engine" (I could do this sort of things), ...

I at first know the basics best from SketchUp, the push/pull method. But I think Ansys Spaceclaim takes it to the next level.

Could it also be done with constraints? And convert them into geometric symbols? Probably very complex because I do not know any CAD software who can do this. Just thinking out loud!

Here you can find a more comprehensive list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compariso ... n_software

Jee-Bee wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 7:25 am I'm quite sure the Creo for $2200 isn't the full version!

This will probably be the Annual Maintenance Fee. A license will probably be around 8000.- depending on the modules you want. (comparable with Catia and Solidworks)

Maybe the Lithophane workbench can help here: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30496