1.7% Market Share of CAD Software

[marcin_ose]

Can anyone point me to other threads on FreeCAD usability and forward motion in terms of the FreeCAD interface?

We've been using FreeCAD as our core tool since 2 years now, migrating from Sketchup. Sketchup does not allow for any real engineering, while FreeCAD does. I made the self-proclaimed best lol FreeCAD intro video in the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwcFg-anVHE

The basic workflow of extruded sketches, and then extruded sketches on other faces - is powerful and sufficient for just about any design.

I'd like to hear what others think is a critical missing link for why FreeCAD is not getting wider adoption. As far as I am concerned - it is a robust solution as is, but it does have plenty of quirks for which one has to learn work-arounds. Maybe focusing on determining and documenting one 'standard design method' which successfully avoids all the bugs - so that an average novice never runs into the bugs?

[DeepSOIC]

Once realthunder work is merged, I think the market share will go up by quite a bit

[Kunda1]

Continuing the list:

Probably getting more higher educational institutions involved to sponsor build servers (read: appimages, flatpaks) continuous integration.
Middle and higher education Teachers incorporating FC in to their curriculum.

Infrastructure-wise: better automated integration between bugtracker, forum, and github. More dev-ops.
Sponsoring developers to enhance aspects of FC like Arch, Path, FEM, etc...

[NormandC]

Can anyone point me to other threads on FreeCAD usability and forward motion in terms of the FreeCAD interface?

Go back to the Forum Index and look for the UX/UI Design forum down in the Development section.

[bejant]

I made the self-proclaimed best lol FreeCAD intro video in the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwcFg-anVHE

At 2:38 it incorrectly states:
"You can edit any sketch until you turn it into a 3D object."

phpBB [video]

A Sketch can be edited afterwards too. But still a nice video.

[Mark Szlazak]

Check out how shares of the following have been over the last 5 years.
Solidworks, CREO/PTC, Seimens NX, Catia, AutoCAD, IronCAD

[kkremitzki]

I'd like to hear what others think is a critical missing link for why FreeCAD is not getting wider adoption. As far as I am concerned - it is a robust solution as is, but it does have plenty of quirks for which one has to learn work-arounds. Maybe focusing on determining and documenting one 'standard design method' which successfully avoids all the bugs - so that an average novice never runs into the bugs?

Hi Marcin, glad to see you're posting here as I've been following the OSE work for some time; you and the other OSE devs are putting FreeCAD to some very interesting uses.

It might be too early to be thinking about a sort of "golden path" for design to avoid bugs--in this metaphor we're still hacking roads out of the swamp and laying bricks for the "golden path" will just be lost in the mire. I think the best way forward for now is to try to attract users and developers to become contributors.

Also, I think, to answer your original question, the unsurprising answer of how to increase market share is, more or less, marketing. Showing off stuff the OSE project does with FreeCAD is good marketing. Having a well-maintained subreddit helps since that website has so much traffic. The same is true for Twitter. Things like Google Summer of Code can generate a lot of good buzz. (Promoted) collaboration with universities can do the same, and that can synergize with GSoC. Taking advantage of collaboration opportunities is a big one--besides GSoC, there's also Outreachy which we could be using to attract contributors. In the long-run, making it easier for people to give support to FreeCAD by making some sort of formal organization, e.g. through the Software Freedom Conservancy or Software in the Public Interest, would help as well. Just having the option for a non-profit write-off would, I'm sure, bring in money that could help fund development and accelerate things.

The post on Hacker News about the 0.17 release got a good amount of traffic and discussion. Things like Yorik's monthly blog posts help. The OpenStreetMap project has a weekly newsletter that is just a summary of things that have happened in all the different communication channels (http://www.weeklyosm.eu/) It would be great if someone stepped up and started producing something like that which summarizes FreeCAD forum discussion, bug tracker news, important pull requests, cool user-submitted models, etc. I'm also planning on putting together a "Planet FreeCAD" so if more people started blogging about their FreeCAD projects, that would help too!

Good marketing means things like knowing the audience you're trying to sell to, and since FreeCAD is an open source project, our "clientele" can be attracted by aesthetic things like logos, slick landing pages, and well-produced videos or presentations, if they themselves have a marketing buzz around them (e.g. a new logo released to no fanfare wouldn't work.) Traditional CAD can get away with not caring about this because of market inertia and the fact that who they're selling to is fundamentally different.

[Mark Szlazak]

If you want more market share then get FreeCAD in colleges and universities so students can use it!

I stumbled onto one of these university reports which was comparing Solidworks, FreeCAD and i think a Russian package. Solidworks won with the Russian software a second choice. FreeCAD was quickly dismissed because it did not have an (adequate) assembly workbench nor Drawing/Blueprints workbench. This was a few years ago.

[easyw-fc]

If you want more market share then get FreeCAD in colleges and universities so students can use it!

This is definitively true...
KiCAD, which is a big OSS EDA suite project, is considering educational environment a powerful vehicle to promote the sw.

quote from CERN pages:

Apart from Open Hardware designers themselves, academic institutions will also benefit from the development of KiCad.

In line with CERN's mission for education, students will be able to use professional-quality PCB design tools free from constraints imposed by cost, functionality or intellectual property restrictions. They will also be able to contribute to further improving the tool for the benefit of others, an activity with a high educational value in itself and which will increase their employment potential.

University professors and students will have a powerful tool to teach and learn real-life electronics through the design of actual circuits in the context of their studies. In addition, because KiCad is Free Software, students wanting to pursue their developments outside of regular lecture times will be free to do so. The exchange of designs will also be seamless, both within and between different academic institutions.

Moreover, now KiCAD is suggesting FreeCAD for mechanical integration, so this is also an other way to promote FreeCAD.

I stumbled onto one of these university reports which was comparing Solidworks, FreeCAD and i think a Russian package. Solidworks won with the Russian software a second choice. FreeCAD was quickly dismissed because it did not have an (adequate) assembly workbench nor Drawing/Blueprints workbench. This was a few years ago.

FreeCAD is going to have Assembly3 WB for the assembly feature and has also TechDraw for Blueprints...
An other big feature is mechanical interoperability, and this has also been achieved with the STEP import/export improvements...

Then it should be much easier to promote the sw to universities and schools.

May be some teacher here at the forum could do the same that someone is doing with KiCad
classroom-installation-of-kicad

[marcin_ose]

Check out how shares of the following have been over the last 5 years.
Solidworks, CREO/PTC, Seimens NX, Catia, AutoCAD, IronCAD

Can you point us to that data? Link?