News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The User Always Loses. Parent comment

Re:The User Always Loses by Animats on Saturday September 05, 2020 @05:57PM (#24387170)
Autodesk is only able to get away with what it does because regulators allowed it to buy out its competitors. Further, the extreme technical difficulty of reverse-engineering complex file formats--including legal obstacles such as enforceable shrink-wrap contracts against reverse engineering, the DMCA ban on reverse engineering, and patent issues--means that it's virtually impossible for competing, interoperable, products to emerge in Autodesk's markets.

The main competition for Autodesk's Fusion 360 is SolidWorks. It's possible, although not that easy, to get models back and forth.[1]

There's FreeCAD. There are many low end 2D CAD programs. If you're building something bigger than a house or more complicated than a keyboard, though, you probably want a pro product.

[1] https://www.buildercentral.com/solidworks-vs-fusion-360/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The User Always Loses by wappa on Saturday September 05, 2020 @09:34PM (#24388275)
FreeCAD likely helps Autodesk's position - when freecad is so crap, you will likely just pay for autocad/or/other than even looking at alternatives, because you have been already so frustrated.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The User Always Loses by Animats on Saturday September 05, 2020 @09:53PM (#24388374)
Having used FreeCAD, I agree.

Constructive solid geometry is hard, but it's all math. User interfaces for 3D CAD are very hard. Open source is terrible at hard user interfaces. Hence, no really good free 3D CAD.

[ Parent | on HN ]