I apologize in advance for the length of this... It's something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
Danintheden wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2018 8:33 am
The Eskom FreeCAD roll-out presentation was combined with a python introductory workshop, the combination of these free multipurpose tools are already sufficient for many professionals requirements and may aid you in your presentation.
That's really useful. I don't know how many in my presentation care about FEM and CFD, but it's certainly relevant.
Danintheden wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2018 8:33 am
challenges to start introducing FreeCAD for production uses remain, you still get what you pay for, either by effort or by $$$'s and effort.
Right. And this is what I'm really trying to work through when I present open source in my profession. In my view, it's not really right to look at open source solutions and compare them feature-for-feature to their proprietary counterparts. Many FOSS projects themselves do not set out to mimic or exactly replace the proprietary solutions (e.g., LibreOffice doesn't want to be a FOSS MS Office. They want to do the things MS Office can't). Obviously, open source projects have to meet the same needs as their industry counterparts, but I think it's too easy to forget which needs reflect actual computing needs and which are really just expectations of "feature parity", even if it's not critical for the workflow.
So my goal is to present FOSS in it's own context. I don't want to sell it as "Hey, here's a free replacement for proprietary software 'X' ". That just sets up the conversation to focus on feature parity. Rather, I want to highlight what makes FOSS better than proprietary (which gets a bit ideological), and be clear that the goal isn't to replace proprietary solutions outright, but to work alongside and have a productive role in the software ecosystem that exists today.
We understand that in the FOSS world.
We know we have to play well with others. There's a reason why people roll their eyes when "Linux vs. Windows" flamewars start on a forum. It's the same reason that "Microsoft loves Linux" (apparently): both OS's meet the same computing needs, but they have (generally) orthogonal purposes and, likewise, strengths that the other can benefit from. Most of the Linux community just doesn't care about whether or not Linux dominates the desktop, from what I can tell. And they shouldn't.
Likewise, I don't think the goal in FreeCAD is to beat Autodesk, Bentley, or any other proprietary vendor at their own game. Focusing on that is just a distraction to what the FreeCAD community is trying to accomplish, and, from what I can tell, no one really cares about that around here, anyway
. Of course, we have to inevitably compete against the established proprietary solutions out there, but to my mind, it seems most reasonable to show how FreeCAD can work alongside, and integrate with, existing proprietary workflows, rather than allow the conversation to focus on how it can (or if it can) replace them.
Anyway, it's just my thoughts on the topic. I don't mean to make the thread about this, per se. I'm really mostly interested in good examples of FreeCAD in production "in the wild".