>> Think of it this way: You are Michelangelo carving a statue of David from a rock. There is no text file, only rock. Then 500 years later someone uses a laser to digitize the statue. This is how 3D CAD works: you make an object, then maybe you need an STL file so you can print it; the software uses lasers or whatever to measure the object and make an STL file.
This is entirely incorrect, this is exactly how 3D CAD does not work ... what you are describing here is nothing more than a capture of an object, an uneditable rendering. 3D CAD captures the design intent, a series of decisions and dependencies, and from those decisions and dependencies it creates the object. A much better way of thinking of 3D CAD is: You are Michelangelo carving a statue of David from a rock. You have kept a detailed notebook of sketches, instructions, notes about the the relative measurements of the statue, the angles of the arms and legs, the details of how the skin surfaces are smoothed from the limb joints etc, everything you need to create exactly the finished work again from another lump of rock, even if the orginial is lost and no one even has an image of what it looked like. Essentially there is no rock, only the notebook, the text file. 500 years later, someone can perform the same task, but they can alter any of the design decisions or angles, or parameters used to smooth skin. The crucial thing to remember is the CAD file usually does not store the object at all, it stores the set of instructions (th source code if you like) to create the object when that set of instructions is fed into a suitable tool that can interpret them (run the code) and build the object from scratch. On Sat, 10 Oct 2026 at 04:26, maurice e heskett <[email protected]> wrote: > On 10/9/26 18:02, andy pugh wrote: > > On Fri, 9 Oct 2026 at 22:25, Chris Albertson <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > >> Next problem is the FreecAD just happens to have the worst user > interface of any 3D CAD system. It works, but the user experience is > poorer than with other systems. > > I have used worse, but it was a while ago. And I am prepared to > > believe that there are worse out there. But that video seems to > > suggest that it's improving fast. > > > > Arguably OpenSCAD is worse, depending on how you define "user interface". > Debatable. I like the text src I can see and edit in real time, but find > the editor a bit clunky. > > But I am not necessarily disagreeing with your statement. I can't say > > I am enjoying my ideologically-based switch from Fusion to FreeCAD. I > > am not finding myself modelling for fun in quite the same way. > > > > But I _am_ confident that _my_ models remain _my_ models and will > > always work with the version of FreeCAD on _my_ computer. > The latter Exactly, Andy. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
