name FreeCAD 0.91 instead of 0.20, means version after 0.19 could be 0.91

[Joel_graff]

This only confirms to me why things are the way they are at the moment. FreeCAD had quite a clear goal and was on a good path to it, lately however no one cares anymore what the tools, concepts and methods of a fully parametric modeler are, everyone is happy with their 5 icons and beyond that who cares how everything else should fit and work together...
...
You do realize that we mostly have five implementations of everything and each one going in to its own direction with little or even no compatibility between them. It is hard to see quality in that and meaningful use of resources...

Not arguing that's an issue. It seems as though that ought to be addressed as a part of the development roadmap. I would see fragmentation as distinct from production capability. It's a blessing and a curse.

I think 'v1.0' needs to satisfy a more narrowly-focused question: Does the issue prevent (or very significantly complicate) creating a model in FreeCAD, which can otherwise be created in another package? If so, does that failure represent an edge use case, or does it represent a significant requirement for production-level modeling?

Because if one would really look forward to make a greater impact in the world then one would realize that trying to have some compatibility with the common practices and standards is probably not such a bad thing to build on.

Of course - there's a reason there are industry standards.

But are we adopting a standard workflow because that's the way SolidWorks does it, or because that's the way it needs to be done to competently model in a parametric CAD tool? It can be a blurry line as often, commercial vendors implement their own standards to control the market, even if they aren't necessary - Microsoft OOXML and Internet Explorer comes to mind as an example (even though those aren't workflows). To the point, LibreOffice decided they wanted to create a package that did everything MS-Office does not. They didn't care about achieve feature parity with MS-Office or adopting it's workflows. Subsequently, as a both an MS-Office and LibreOffice user, I find can do everything in both packages, just not in the same ways.

We don't seem to have a good set of criteria to evaluate these differing opinions. In my opinion, we need that to determine what does (and does not) constitute a production-level requirement for a "version 1" software package...

[Zolko]

@Zolko: if FreeCAD is really that bad, why did you not leave for something better? Obviously because it has something that others don't.

Open-source. That's the only thing that FreeCAD has. And the very principle of open-source is code-reuse, not re-inventing what already existed. So the question remains: if resources are so scarce, why are there 2-3 implementations of each function ?

[Jee-Bee]

...

...

Please stop complaining both of you. Nobody says FC is finished. nobody say there are no improvements.
It is just that the number is sounds less than the quality of the product is. And no you don't have to agree with that
i also know "other" CAD software have:

• better features
• more features
• assembly WB
• ... whatever

but had PTC Pro-Engineer all the current features in 1987? (current is version about 32)
How well works solid works in 1995? (current is version 27)
Was NX that stable in 1973 (the current is about the 38th release or so)
Everbody knows the clash to catia 5 with Boeing. It is still the reason a huge amount of companies don't want to go to version 6 while it is about 10 years ago that version 6 is released...

On the other hand small packages as below work well with limited functionality
Rhinoceros 3D has no solid structure no assembly module but is used for most expensive ships world wide.
autodesk fusion 360 don't have assembly too but well used for production.

check https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=29354 for what is possible!!

The number is just a number and i think 0.xx isn't


Maybe if one of you about 40 - 50 kilo euro left i think @Werner could take some free days to work on FC for the next year.
Otherwise please help least you can do is help with the wiki.

[saso]

All of this is perhaps right for software being programmed by a very well paid team of developers with some marketing guys telling the project manger what they need next.

FreeCAD is - you might have guessed from the name - free. Free of charge, free access to all (re)sources, and free for free programmers. And it is very natural that they program what they need. Why should I program a post processor for the Path workbench that suits many machines but not mine? You might say it should not be merged, because other things are more important, but as there is no guarantee that those more important things ever come. So let's simply take what we have and what makes FreeCAD better.

Of course you have a good point here, but I don't fully agree on the last part, I don't think that this is always making it batter. I don't care if some workbenches go in a very different way (from a more classical parametric cad point of view) but FreeCAD needs a good and stable core of tools and yes I really don't see what else if not what can be found in other commercial applications should represent this core.

Quite a few open source projects actually have such moments where there is quite a lot of arguing in the community about the direction the project should go, blender for example also had it, hopefully we all will be able to laugh about this in five years...

[saso]

Please stop complaining both of you. Nobody says FC is finished. nobody say there are no improvements.
It is just that the number is sounds less than the quality of the product is.

Well yes, I guess we went a bit off topic here, no one was talking about the version number any more

There reason why Boeing (and everyone else) had the problem with going from catia 4 to 5 is however exactly the type of reasons we are trying to make a point about here with our arguments.

[Jee-Bee]

I don't agree with that... but i don't want to start the next off topic

[saso]

But in light of this new revelation I will never question Your Excellency again.

Don't think he tried to represent himself as a superior being, just someone who has enough knowledge and experience that will not buy on cheap tricks.

[yorik]

One just looks away for a minute and you guys fill like 10 pages

My two cents: I'd also want a higher number. I'm growing tired of 0.18, 0.19, 0.20... It feels not very optimistic. Many of us will grow large grey beards before we get much further. I'd like some "achievement"! (purely symbolic of course, we HAVE achievements).

I also think changing the numbering system (ex go from X.XX to XXXX) will create unfathomable headache with the linux distributions.

I think we should aim for 1.0. We are close to it. We should decide what are doable, medium-term goals we can achieve for it. The miraculous assembly that will unite us all is IMHO an illusion. @realthunder's work is of course by far the closest thing we have to it, but it's an extremely challenging and complex thing, with changes all over FreeCAD, that basically only him is able to handle so far. And we have extremely good feedback from A2plus too, which more and more makes me think, we have a working solution there. I wonder if we shouldn't reconsider this "1.0 == assembly" concept.

[GeneFC]

just someone who has enough knowledge and experience that will not buy on cheap tricks.

But that is exactly my point. There appear to be many thousands of users who thrive on "cheap tricks", as you say. Insisting that FreeCAD is worthless unless it can be used to design an Airbus is simply elitism that says the rest of us are more or less incompetent and lack knowledge or experience.

Of course FreeCAD can be improved. It does not yet meet the requirements for everyone. But it is really quite an important resource for many people.

And back on topic, I don't care what the number scheme is. I can deal with numbers of any size.

Gene

[saso]

But are we adopting a standard workflow because that's the way SolidWorks does it, or because that's the way it needs to be done to competently model in a parametric CAD tool?

I have never argued about doing something exactly as some other commercial program, but if it is the general way how all of them (solidworks, catia, nx, solidedge, inventor, fusion, creo, onshape) do it, then yes.

To the point, LibreOffice decided they wanted to create a package that did everything MS-Office does not. They didn't care about achieve feature parity with MS-Office or adopting it's workflows. Subsequently, as a both an MS-Office and LibreOffice user, I find can do everything in both packages, just not in the same ways.

Funny you mention LibreOffice, because they have actually been working very hard (and still are) to support and be as compatible as possible to both the MS Office and the Open Document file formats. This is not about making FreeCAD look the same as some other cad program its how things function and connect together in the background. Making something just look the same as in some commercial tool does not mean that it is actually working as it should. Some time ago I have compared parametric modeling to programming, if we would be creating a new programming language, I guess you do understand that it would be a bit silly argument to say we don't need to implement arrays because we already have loops, yes maybe you can get similar functionality from loops in some cases, but it just makes no sense.