1.7% Market Share of CAD Software

[marcin_ose]

....
Sponsoring developers to enhance aspects of FC like Arch, Path, FEM, etc...

Is there any formal process for sponsoring FreeCAD development? I would be interested in collaborating on this if there is no prior work so we can come up with a list of priority points, qualified developers, their availability, and cost of development.

[sliptonic]

It's not done at an organizational level. It's open-source so anyone can contribute including organizations that have paid a developer to do the work.

The Path workbench started life this way. The original code was written as part of a contract gig and the community ran with it after that.

If you wanted to have a specific feature written or improved, you could contract with a developer, either an existing FreeCAD dev, or one of your own choosing and get the code written. Then submit a pull request to have it merged. As long as the feature doesn't break existing functionality, introduce unwanted/unnecessary dependencies, or violate licenses, it's likely to be accepted. If the developer communicates with us and works with the community through the process, it's even more likely.

[vocx]

Is there any formal process for sponsoring FreeCAD development? ...

See Donate.

There is no formal process. You can donate to individual developers, through a liberapay account, for example. Or if you wish you can set up a bounty so somebody works on a specific topic.

It is crucial to identify the objectives of such sponsoring. If you want to sponsor somebody, what are they supposed to do? Just general funding, "do whatever you want" style? Or should it be focused on something? Is it something small, big, complex, a completely new functionality? Is it in C++ or Python? Is it documentation?

[kkremitzki]

There's a major improvement in this regard coming hopefully soon. A long while ago I contacted the Software Freedom Conservancy about becoming a member project, got started, but never finished the application... I finally went about asking for help and Yorik was able to complete it, so I sent it off just recently.

If/when that relationship formalizes, we will have a way to receive tax-deductible donations towards FreeCAD development. However, once we get that money, we will still need a process for doling it out for work, and the things Marcin mentioned are exactly what we would want for that: "priority points, qualified developers, their availability, and cost of development."

[drmacro]

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?

Great stuff!
You should really consider updating it to use 0.19. 0.16 is ancient.

[Kunda1]

An aside: @marcin_ose would OSE meet the criteria for becoming a GSoC organization that could attract students ?

[TomB19]

If the software is good, and it's well beyond good, it will attract users. With the current stability, power, usability, and multi-platform, it's just a matter of time before FreeCAD displaces everybody on the lower cost part of the CAD market. That should attract more donations.

IMO, the biggest problem with FreeCAD is that version 0.18 exists and is the recommended version. It isn't stable. Many people who try it will conclude FreeCAD is not ready for the real world. pre-0.19 is very ready. It's been months since 0.19 has crashed on me and I've tested several versions in that time.

FreeCAD will be very popular a year or two after pe-19 is productized and turned into the default download.

[marcin_ose]

An aside: @marcin_ose would OSE meet the criteria for becoming a GSoC organization that could attract students ?
[/quote]

I think so. We should try that.

[marcin_ose]

If the software is good, and it's well beyond good, it will attract users. With the current stability, power, usability, and multi-platform, it's just a matter of time before FreeCAD displaces everybody on the lower cost part of the CAD market. That should attract more donations.

It seems to me that FreeCAD will dominate the market, just like Blender has, because FreeCAD allows one to create new design workbenches for anything. That is a powerful feature, and is not likely to be found in proprietary software.

[aapo]

It seems to me that FreeCAD will dominate the market, just like Blender has, because FreeCAD allows one to create new design workbenches for anything. That is a powerful feature, and is not likely to be found in proprietary software.

Also, the license and use are free; and more importantly, because you get the sources with full rights to compile it to any and all platforms you want, it's not going to disappear in thin air and make all your projects unusable. Compare this to commercial software with binary distribution and licenses that may forbid you to transfer your copy of the software to any new hardware. What happens if the software is discontinued? With FreeCAD there is an implicit guarantee to exist as long as there are any users left, and that is also a pretty powerful feature, if the majority of users will be forward-thinking engineers.

That is actually the main reason I use FreeCAD and not any of the proprietary options. I can trust it to be available; at least in its current form, even if the development would completely cease. Of course, at the moment, the development seems to actually have accelerated, which I'm very happy about as a user!