CADCloud Video introduction

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vejmarie
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Re: CADCloud Video introduction

Post by vejmarie »

drmacro wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 4:48 pm I understand.

I was working with a noob on gitter and it would be great to see his freecad file.

And, I thought "hey this would be a great way to use that CADCLOUD thing I read about..."

;)
Feel free to use it for debug purpose. Their is about 2TB storage available, and I am really far away from using it ;). I can't guarantee that it will work, but the best way to enhance/debug it is to use it ;) and report bugs !
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Re: CADCloud Video introduction

Post by vocx »

drmacro wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 4:48 pm ...
And, I thought "hey this would be a great way to use that CADCLOUD thing I read about..."
Yes, that's the idea, it just needs to be developed further.

So the next steps are as follows, vejmarie will create a start-up company that specializes in CAD data sharing based on FreeCAD, it will be named FreeCloud (TM); he will raise $20 million dollars in seed investment to establish the first public system; then he will make it open to everybody; users in this forum will start subscribing to it, and it will gain traction; then he will raise another $200 million to develop the system further; he will design premium features for big customers, automotive and aerospace companies, while keeping the basic cloud storage and sharing free for everybody else, similar to Gmail and Gmail "Business" (or whatever). Then after a while, Microsoft will buy the company CADCloud (TM) for 1 billion dollars, and will try integrating it into GitHub, so that users can share CAD data, and keep track of the changes through Git.

And they lived happily ever after.
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vejmarie
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Re: CADCloud Video introduction

Post by vejmarie »

vocx wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 5:11 pm
drmacro wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 4:48 pm ...
And, I thought "hey this would be a great way to use that CADCLOUD thing I read about..."
Yes, that's the idea, it just needs to be developed further.

So the next steps are as follows, vejmarie will create a start-up company that specializes in CAD data sharing based on FreeCAD, it will be named FreeCloud (TM); he will raise $20 million dollars in seed investment to establish the first public system; then he will make it open to everybody; users in this forum will start subscribing to it, and it will gain traction; then he will raise another $200 million to develop the system further; he will design premium features for big customers, automotive and aerospace companies, while keeping the basic cloud storage and sharing free for everybody else, similar to Gmail and Gmail "Business" (or whatever). Then after a while, Microsoft will buy the company CADCloud (TM) for 1 billion dollars, and will try integrating it into GitHub, so that users can share CAD data, and keep track of the changes through Git.

And they lived happily ever after.
@vocx I like your model, especially when you know that I live in Silicon Valley. The only tradeoff is that I soon created a startup that I successfully sold ;) 2 years ago. So I roughly know all the challenges and excitement that it could bring. I thought a lot of time about CADCloud and business model, and what it could lead to. I am strongly believing that this could be an amazing startup idea, and I'll be happy to be part of the story, but probably not as the startup founder (I could change my mind one day). One of the thing is more about who would get access to the data, because the value is in the data, and how could we ensure that it stay public. I am closer to a wikipedia model, or a foundation model where people can live from their work but without the shareholder constraint (and I was in a case where I really liked my shareholders). The challenge is that you don't get rich out of this, but I do believe that such tools are more important than getting me or somebody else rich especially during a pandemic time. Now it also means that we need to find a way to sustain the development and get early adopter to prove that the technology is useful for itself and not as a pure marketing product like a startup would go forward. The other challenge is that I still have a daily job (that I love) even if I could get rid of it. Part of it is to introduce open technologies inside HPE like open source firmware (I created a project called linuxboot) and other development methodologies like CADCloud could spawn. I got enough capacity to build up an infrastructure for CADCloud right now, and be happy to help make it happens.

The OCP foundation could also help us if needed, I am pretty convinced about that.
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Re: CADCloud Video introduction

Post by vocx »

vejmarie wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 5:27 pm ... One of the thing is more about who would get access to the data, because the value is in the data, and how could we ensure that it stay public.
...
I'm not sure what you mean by "data"? Do you mean the FreeCAD model, the thing that is modelled in 3D? That information should be private or public, depending on the owner of that data. It's like email, why should the contents of the email be public? I'm not sure I'm understanding you well here.
I am closer to a wikipedia model, or a foundation model where people can live from their work but without the shareholder constraint
...
I'm not sure what you mean by this. You mean like a public site with tons of 3D models that other users could see and use? I didn't think about this exactly.
... I got enough capacity to build up an infrastructure for CADCloud right now, and be happy to help make it happens.

The OCP foundation could also help us if needed, I am pretty convinced about that.
Okay, then we may try it, no?

By the way, have you thought about the architecture community? Similar to the Fusion360 situation, the architects who use Revit (Autodesk) are upset with their software (high price, slow development, lock-in), so they are also looking into alternatives. Currently Blender offers plugins that could become competitive to handle building data (IFC format). I am thinking that this CADCloud could be used to share building models made in FreeCAD among different people working remotely (civil engineers, architects, etc.). The OSArch community may be interested but we would need to have a test server to test these things. Does a similar Cloud concept already exist for Blender? Having a cloud that could handle Blender and FreeCAD files would be great.
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vejmarie
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Re: CADCloud Video introduction

Post by vejmarie »

vocx wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 5:59 pm I'm not sure what you mean by "data"? Do you mean the FreeCAD model, the thing that is modelled in 3D? That information should be private or public, depending on the owner of that data. It's like email, why should the contents of the email be public? I'm not sure I'm understanding you well here.
Yes I mean the FreeCAD model. The technology by itself is totally useless without the content and making money out of the content, if you want to make a company out of such technologies. Their is a model which tends to say that a manufacturing model might be also super great. Like "I am designing something and I do not have the capacity to manufacture it, can you help me to do it ?". Their is no need to make the data always public, but I loved to see a reference database of FreeCAD parts, like screws, beams etc of parts that I can purchase as an example.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. You mean like a public site with tons of 3D models that other users could see and use? I didn't think about this exactly.
Yes, and not backup by a privately own company but more something which is funded through either donation or something else.
Okay, then we may try it, no?
yes this is what I am doing, smoothly, but surely.
By the way, have you thought about the architecture community? Similar to the Fusion360 situation, the architects who use Revit (Autodesk) are upset with their software (high price, slow development, lock-in), so they are also looking into alternatives. Currently Blender offers plugins that could become competitive to handle building data (IFC format). I am thinking that this CADCloud could be used to share building models made in FreeCAD among different people working remotely (civil engineers, architects, etc.). The OSArch community may be interested but we would need to have a test server to test these things. Does a similar Cloud concept already exist for Blender? Having a cloud that could handle Blender and FreeCAD files would be great.
I think CADCloud could be extended to Blender and KiCAD which are the 2 software I liked to address with it either. But it does require a lot of work, and my bandwidth is limited. I am hoping that we can create a community spirit and get people helping me and CADCloud to build up a single sharing platform.
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Re: CADCloud Video introduction

Post by vocx »

vejmarie wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 6:09 pm ... Their is no need to make the data always public, but I loved to see a reference database of FreeCAD parts, like screws, beams etc of parts that I can purchase as an example.
Okay, so your idea is more about open hardware, basically, open components that can be reused by anybody. Yes, this is a good idea, I'm not opposed to it. However, my original idea is that this could be used for internal management of models within big organizations, for example, Boeing, GM, etc. They have thousands of engineers that need to collaborate, so a private cloud for them would be something that could be offered. And separately you can have this open cloud, wikipedia style, for the rest of the world.

My point is that companies still have private information, even if they are using open source technologies.

---

About architectural use, see [Paper] Open Source Cloud-Based Technologies for BIM.
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vejmarie
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Re: CADCloud Video introduction

Post by vejmarie »

vocx wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 6:40 pm
vejmarie wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 6:09 pm ... Their is no need to make the data always public, but I loved to see a reference database of FreeCAD parts, like screws, beams etc of parts that I can purchase as an example.
Okay, so your idea is more about open hardware, basically, open components that can be reused by anybody. Yes, this is a good idea, I'm not opposed to it. However, my original idea is that this could be used for internal management of models within big organizations, for example, Boeing, GM, etc. They have thousands of engineers that need to collaborate, so a private cloud for them would be something that could be offered. And separately you can have this open cloud, wikipedia style, for the rest of the world.

My point is that companies still have private information, even if they are using open source technologies.

---

About architectural use, see [Paper] Open Source Cloud-Based Technologies for BIM.
That is right in some ways, but the software by itself can be use as you describe it. I will take as a comparaison, github and gitlab. CADCloud is following a gitlab implementation, which allow any private companies to deploy the software as an internal open source tool.
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Re: CADCloud Video introduction

Post by 6ffm70 »

vejmarie, what a cool project!

I can imagine so many uses for it - many enterprises use product data management PDM in their (surprisingly often very cluttered) product lifecycle management PLM environments. I've used to work with them daily in different multinationals.

Up until now, there were no tools known to me available for public collaboration in 3d design projects. Josef Prusa has their product designs open source, but has no means to support community development; they are merely stored in a Github repo.

A platform like github for product development with 3d files would be a gamechanger; not only in community development, but could also interface commercial interests like online spare parts catalogues.

Beside managing rights and versioning, PDM systems maintain file associations for 3d/2d files, and provide release level management. How cool would that be, if one could branch, merge and tag like code with git - as outlined here: https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Assembly_pr ... on_control
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