> You’ve charged me, when will I get my refund?
>We are unable to issue refunds. Executive order 13884, orders the cessation of all activity with the entities including no sales, service, support, refunds, credits, etc.
So no refunds either. Renting stuff in the cloud is just waiting to be screwed if the country you're in is on the hit list of the US government. And that's not a short list either, btw.
>If you purchased directly from Adobe, we will refund you by the end of the month for any paid, but unused services. We are working with our partners on the same.
I wonder what caused this. Did something important change, or did Adobe just overreact at first?
Yet, when google mail for business came out everyone hailed the idea; sigh... no more CALs, etc. which is true but now you have to pay recurringly (and msy have to keep former accounts live for compliance reasons)
I wonder how much recurring revenue Adobe just had wiped off their books.
What about when your government sanctions your biggest market?
Sketch, Designer, etc, are all pretty crippled when it comes to working with groups instead of layers. Many people have asked for group isolation mode in Designer for years, but it's not really a priority for Serif.
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/1640-ad-is...
I tried developing a script for Sketch but the SDK doesn't provide the needed API to implement it properly and quite frankly Sketch is super slow once you work on complex projects.
The only software I've found that does groups well is a little software called Amadine, but it's still not very mature.
The team that develops PixelMator promised a vectors graphics software but are too busy with PixelMator Pro.
I haven't used Corel Draw in almost 20 years but now that they have a mac verson I will give it a try.
Affinity Photo is a great replacement for Photoshop though.
There isn't any good constraint based / procedural vector software. Best I've able to find for my needs is Fusion 360 but it's really for 3D not for 2D. I want things to reflow automatically based on parameterized constraints and nothing does that except for Fusion 360 and/or OpenSCAD but those are both horrible for 2D vector.
I've even resorted to use React and SVG to dynamically generate vectored laser cut designs. https://github.com/brennancheung/lasercut-react-svg/blob/mas...
If anyone has any recommendations I'd love to hear them.
I do my designs in qcad, submit as a vector PDF, and the laser guys get that into Corel somehow. There might be some trickiness to the conversion due to how curves are represented in the PDFs? Maybe not. All I know is my parts come out fine.
I believe some people use Inkscape, but I found it unusably clunky. YMMV.
Going from vector graphics to laser cut product is fucking painful when the design isn’t simple.
Parameterised constrains with sub-millimetre precision in a vector graphics app is the holy grail.
One can also do cross-object relationships using mathematical expressions. This can also be used to make eerything can driven form a single spreadsheet of input values.
Note that in FreeCAD you can always jump down to the Python scripting layer when you hit limits. Either directly (open View -> Panels -> Python console, then do an action in the UI), or using CadQuery: a OpenSCAD like eDSL for FreeCAD models in Python. For over 150 models I have done this twice.
Note that (semi)automated layout of a sheet for production, there is no good solution in FreeCAD right now. I am quite interested in plugging that hole, but don't have the resources for it at this time...
I recently got a new ipad pro and got this app sketchr3d and I was blown away by how intuitive it is to design really sophisticated structures. I tried blender on and off like 4 times over 5 years and found it basically impossible to use.
After making some really cool designs in s3d I started to wonder how easy it is to just print it with some kind of decent 3d printer model.
Is it really plug and play/drag and drop your file?
E.g. I could: Draw 2D plane 10x10 mm; extrude; on one surface, create a diagonal helper line; put three circles on that line; define diameter of one circle to be 2.5mm; constraint diameter of the other circles to be equal to the first; split the helper line at every circle intersection; constrain all line segments to be equally long - now all things are fully constrained. Negative extrude the circles (e.g. make holes into the first volume).
Should produce something like this:
*---*
|o |
| o |
| o|
*---*
As sibling comment says, the design is saved as an STL file, a format they all use, which basically describes the shape of your print in a (variabally sized) load of triangles.
However, most use 'slicer' software on the computer as an intermediate step between the STL export from whatever CAD software your using before actually sending (specific instructions for your model) to the printer.
So, if you wanted to print directly from an iPad, my guess is that you'd need a model of printer that 'slices' STL itself, without desktop software. Even then, you'd probably need (a Lightning <-> USB adapter and) a USB drive to actually get the file from iPad to printer.
Other than that, there’s likely a bunch of parameters that control the actual printing process— there are a lot of tradeoffs to make between print speed, material usage, part strength, etc. The printer software will ask you about these before starting a print.
Not quite. The STL is the model. A slicer “slices” the model into tens to thousands of layers and creates a GCode file that tells the printer exactly what to do.
I made a video about it here.
I personally use Inventor, and there's a nice easy way to convert to STL's in the application.
You then take your slicer of choice (Cura is popular) and toss the STL in there, and click print.
Pretty close to plug & play.
I've setup everything once about 2 years ago, and should probably update the toolchain (klipper is awesome).
Can you expand on that?
You mean like having a UI solver for drawing gears?
Other times there is constraint based solving going on. And other times there are simple formulae based on the dimensions of other vectors (think spreadsheet style reactive).
Photo imports (and exports) to PSD file format.
Some Photoshop features that aren't available in Photo (e.g. smart objects) won't be editable in the same way when opening a PSD in Photo, but you'll still be able to open the PSD file.
If you have a lot of Illustrator and Photoshop files, best to try them out in the Affinity apps to see if you're happy with the import feature.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21184387
Bad day for Adobe. Or a good one? I'm not sure, but definitely an interesting one.
Well, was. They're pushing pretty hard on this evergreen "windows-as-a-service" thing.
Besides i do not see how they could do a "windows-as-a-service" offer without an OS, unless they convince every computer manufacturer to make their PC BIOSes a thin client for Microsoft's servers and you rent computing time/power from their datacenters running Windows (though even then, it'd still be Windows with the same backwards compatibility).
(of course all that sucks for us who want to buy a thing and keep it forever - or at least as "forever" as activation servers will allow you to - but i'm trying to ignore that aspect in this comment here)
Not all software developers can handle all use cases that will be needed, and it's unrealistic to say, "if the use case is needed enough there would be market forces to implement it".
This is an argument people can't distinguish the man from the idea, or his software, or his organization, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20909030
I don't find anything objectionable about Stallman's opinions here either. Quite the contrary in fact.
I don't know how the people who caused this can look at their reflection in the mirror with a straight face.
That is what i do myself - i avoid anything with DRM (exceptions are some games that i wait for price drops to around the price of a coffee) and store everything on my external HDD.
A few months ago they discontinued that model and now I can get Office 365 at a discounted annual price. The enraging part was the email where they spun it like this change was great for me and that HUP is way better than it was before. What a crock, SaaS for consumers is cancer.
The ticket was closed as 'fixed/implemented' with the launch of the most recent version of Office - but you can only embed fonts if you have an Office 365 account.
Its becoming 'subscribe to unlock basic features'.
Accessibility: Individuals/businesses who couldn't afford a large, upfront expenditure for software but can afford the smaller, monthly expense now have access to the best tool for the job.
Flexibility: for sporadic consumers ("I use Photoshop/Illustrator once a year to make my Groundhog Day card"), the ability to subscribe for the one month of the year they use the product and subsequently cancel is incredible.
For the limited number of companies who need to spread out a 1000 dollars or less over a year putting it on a credit card would be the cheaper option over the year.
The only groups that benefits is those who want to access the product from many locations/computers or the one who doesn't want to install anything.
Those are two big groups.
No, it just means adobe created a whole new fleet of pirates.
am I being blithe about this? I don't think I am, but feel free to inform me if I'm missing something.
Being able to pay as you go with no long term commitments can be liberating as well.
But companies do not seem to realise this.
It's a brilliant example of why proprietary software is bad for the user - how do users make sure their software doesn't have a kill switch? How do they ensure it doesn't phone home to validate their license?
Everything’s a trade off.
I've understood the whole point with SaaS software is that corporate buyers prefer operational expenditure to capital expenditure. It's not about an evil plot to screw consumers more. It's a strategy to charge corporate clients in a way that they like.
Now on the other hand... they're screwed. It's a 'brilliant' example of how these 'cloud' based services are a bad deal for the user, because it puts them at the risk of getting locked out their own purchases due to legal hassles like this.