How many man hours would FreeCAD need to reach feature parity with SolidWorks/SolidEdge?
Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:49 am
I'm a startup CEO and we need CAD for our part and assembly designs. I'm a Linux and FOSS fanatic, but in its current state, FreeCAD is insufficient for our needs. I've bitten the bullet and decided to have our server Linux based, and our clients Windows based.
I would really like to go back to a full Linux engineering stack, but the only way for that to happen is for an enterprise level parametric CAD system to be made for Linux. FreeCAD works, it's fully parametric, but the interface is too clunky for us to use effectively. I think it also lacks a couple critical features (double-curve filets for wing fairings) that we need. (Full disclosure: my CAD skills are pretty rudimentary and I'm going off of what my staff is saying)
The question I have is, how much money would we have to dump on the FreeCAD team to make something that compares favorably to SolidEdge/SolidWorks?
As stated in the wiki, this is a completely volunteer project. My intuition would say that it's about .75 Million/yr to get the core design team to work fulltime + the admin staff required. That's the equivalent of ~40 Catia/NX licences. That makes it more than most companies spend on their CAD suite, but about a dozen companies pitching in their CAD budget would more than cover the costs. That said, I design aircraft, not software so I'm not familiar with the scope of this kind of project, or the particular difficulties of a parametric CAD software.
Anyone have a guess as to how realistic this idea is?
I would really like to go back to a full Linux engineering stack, but the only way for that to happen is for an enterprise level parametric CAD system to be made for Linux. FreeCAD works, it's fully parametric, but the interface is too clunky for us to use effectively. I think it also lacks a couple critical features (double-curve filets for wing fairings) that we need. (Full disclosure: my CAD skills are pretty rudimentary and I'm going off of what my staff is saying)
The question I have is, how much money would we have to dump on the FreeCAD team to make something that compares favorably to SolidEdge/SolidWorks?
As stated in the wiki, this is a completely volunteer project. My intuition would say that it's about .75 Million/yr to get the core design team to work fulltime + the admin staff required. That's the equivalent of ~40 Catia/NX licences. That makes it more than most companies spend on their CAD suite, but about a dozen companies pitching in their CAD budget would more than cover the costs. That said, I design aircraft, not software so I'm not familiar with the scope of this kind of project, or the particular difficulties of a parametric CAD software.
Anyone have a guess as to how realistic this idea is?