Unfortunately, it is sponsored by 3DS, so you have to delivered a CAD file with a build tree in native Solidworks or Catia format.
And: "All CAD Challenge participants will receive a free and complete SOLIDWORKS license, complete with all modules: design and simulation tools."
Opus wrote: ↑Tue Oct 16, 2018 10:15 am
It's hard to defend free software.
No, it's not.
1.) Free software means more than the word "free" in "free beer". It's more like in "freedom".
2.) Here are many members around - among them the most busy - who have access to the big boy's tools and nevertheless they push FreeCAD.
3.) I could not find the details of the participation, but I guess that only the selected 10% get a free license and I'm not sure if every team or every person in the team gets the license.
4.) Would they give it for free if there was no free alternative?
Low cost tools are not just about money, they are about spreading the wealth of what a tool can do. Nothing better than supporting inspiration!
I do contract work so I go visit the big boys with their $10K CAD systems, the company pays for the workstation, maintenance contracts, computers, offices, Insurance, monthly paychecks, it must be nice. Then I cross the hall and visit the circuit board designers and it's the same list all over again. In the past if I had to compete on that level it would cost me on average $2000/month to support those tools. Now after about 40 years of CAD development I can buy a circuit board program for a few hundred dollars and now FreeCAD comes along for free. This changes the equation for the entrepreneur and contractors, which I consider myself both.
I do think, there will be a time, when all software is open source, not only software, even hardware and possibly even such things as pharma. Research has volunteerd the open source way all time anyway. It might still be 20 or 40 years, but I think there's no other way. To get widespread security in a totally connected world you need to have many volunteers looking at the code (or produced items) auditing it. Companies know this, yet they try to get money out of it as long as possible. It's their business after all and they have spent a lot money into it during all those years.
Just look at the github accounts of big companies and you'll find lots of open sourced software already. Even Microsoft which fiercly fought the open source idea 20 years back has more than 2000 repositories hosted on github.
freedman wrote: ↑Tue Oct 16, 2018 2:59 pm
Low cost tools are not just about money, they are about spreading the wealth of what a tool can do. Nothing better than supporting inspiration!
I do contract work so I go visit the big boys with their $10K CAD systems, the company pays for the workstation, maintenance contracts, computers, offices, Insurance, monthly paychecks, it must be nice. Then I cross the hall and visit the circuit board designers and it's the same list all over again. In the past if I had to compete on that level it would cost me on average $2000/month to support those tools. Now after about 40 years of CAD development I can buy a circuit board program for a few hundred dollars and now FreeCAD comes along for free. This changes the equation for the entrepreneur and contractors, which I consider myself both.
Have you looked at KiCAD for designing circuit boards?
It's also free and improving quickly, just like FreeCAD
