How many man hours would FreeCAD need to reach feature parity with SolidWorks/SolidEdge?

[JulianStirling]

As someone that develops open hardware for humanitarian use I have huge interest in the same question. I think "feature parity" is perhaps the wrong phrasing as FreeCAD has a bunch of features other's don't. But for mechanical CAD, there are a number of things which make it difficult for us to encourage collaborators to move to a FLOSS option.

My funding is academic, this means that I would find it very hard put this money into FreeCAD. But I have often mused about what I would do if I had a few million pounds of unrestrained funding. These thoughts may or may not be useful.

My main thought is that not all hero wear capes. While there are heroes like RealThunder that implement incredible functionality there is a bottleneck when it comes to the less glamorous roles. Reviewing code, quality control, etc. I think that if an experienced C++ dev (with some python experience) was employed even just one or two days a week to help test, review, and improve merge requests there would be a huge speed up. I am not suggesting that only these tasks need to be funded, but they are often overlooked especially by bug-bounty style funding.

And yeah, 'pro support' idea sounds good. I actually wanted to make a living like that, once FreeCAD is matured and popular enough for 'pro use'. Maybe it can happen earlier, too.

A pro-support/consultancy company sounds like a really positive step. Writing into academic funding that we would pay a freelancer to work on FLOSS software is hard. Paying a consultancy firm to implement necessary functionality is much easier. Academic funding has a low success rate and is often pretty time limited, so I wouldn't see it is as a large sustainable income source.

[Outsourced]

Hello FC,
Firstly I am not a developer, I'm 4.5 types of Engineer with a god dam spinal injury, Over the last couple of years I've studied various CAD platforms to reaching finally the last platform I will ever learn - so my support is entire (but limited). Literally after wheel burrows full of drugs. I have set out to set the bench mark on crazy.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTFFPB ... KJBZEhSXBA
With a hope that this presentation technique would bring awareness to the Financial struggle this awesome project is facing.
It's not moving quick enough for my liking (Perhaps a little of the old me still lives).

Financial boast Proposal
01. In Australia when a sporting club need to raise funds they run a meat raffle, 'No I am not suggesting run a meat raffle". I am suggesting run a raffle. First you would need an investor to submit a substantial amount (Or take it from the funds raised). Recently my partner was involve in a Samoan Church Raffle the price money was Au $10,000 ~ US$ 7,125. They raised Au $100,000 ~$71,2125 (Less the price moneys).
If you run this 4 times a year that could keep 4-8 Programmers Full time/ Part time.

02.Approach Industry for a product(s) that needs to be designed. Nothing too extreme - Or have 3 product competition levels Beginner:- Entry Fee $1.00, Intermediate:- Entry Fee:- $4.00, Advanced:-$8.00.
Hopefully the industry putting up the Comp would be able to funnel some of the product profit back into the Community for both F.C & the winning designer. Or just issue a certificate "Winner FreeCAD Design Comp 2022" V's Price money from the entry fee.
People by nature are competitive.

Look I'm serious about how crap spinal injury is & I need to things at my own pace, so any further time I can give would perhaps be best suited to Judging or auditing.

[thomas-neemann]

i think the opinion that freecad is not finished is wrong. I would differentiate it.

first of all, i am of the opinion that a 3d cad program does not have to be able to generate 2d plans. there are enough 2d programs for this. this largely offsets the advantages of 3d.

i would not use the possibilities of other 3d systems as a yardstick, but ask the question: can i use freecad as it is now in the situation of a metalworker with own production, or a carpenter etc. I would answer that with yes. this can accelerate the spread of freecad. Due to the further development of freecad, more and more areas of application are added.

I agree to create and maintain a configuration that could have this name:
freecad metal and wood construction 1.0


Greetings Thomas