The downside of spreadsheets is they can really slow your model down. Every cell change triggers a full recompute of the 3D model. VarSets offer much faster performance while sacrificing a couple spreadsheet features. So always choose VarSets over spreadsheets if you can.
The ability to pull in projected geometry as real geometry or construction geometry is in the release candidate for V1.1 that should be released reasonably soon. There's a lot of other cool features in V1.1 as well.
I treat FreeCAD as a rolling release, using the dev version on a decently complex model [0] and it has been a really good experience so far. Lots of useful features and fixees going in all the time.
It doesn't need to be "most". "Some" or even "a few" can be enough to make a hell of a mess if those few have created documents that are key to the business in one way or another (proposals, end-user documentation, etc). And there are the other components to the suite like Powerpoint, Excel, and Project to consider.
So then act now, because the best time to act was yesterday, and the longer you wait the worse the mess and pain becomes. Not acting at all is not an option.
Yep. There are no exclusives anymore, not even timed ones. Those releases that aren't Day 1 on Playstation now is only because they were too far along in development to make that happen. This is part of their "Everything is an XBox" mantra, giving people pretty much zero incentive to buy XBox hardware right now.
> The authors get somewhat blinded to the pain because they're used to it, plus change is difficult for the established userbase. There's also a feeling that emulating competitors is surrendering one's own identity, and the idea that some of the rough edges are justified by "the powerfulness". Thus radically changing defaults, streamlining, simplifying and even just matching user expectations is often perceived as "taking the power away" and really difficult to have the daring-do to just do. Even though on the other side of the transition a much larger and happier userbase awaits.
I think it is unfair to say that they are "blinded to the pain". They are well aware of it from what I've seen of the Dev discussions on Discord. But the vast majority of the devs are volunteers so they can only do so much so fast. There are also some very nice usability improvements as of late that borrow from other programs, like the Solidworks-style navigation settings and the on-screen draggers for pad / pocket / transform type operations. Yes there are tons of preferences and some of the defaults might not be great, but they've added a "Search Preferences" field to help sort through them all. Then there are issues like in the link below where the discussion of how to improve FreeCAD considers comparisons with other pieces of software.
Another point I'll add is their creation of a Design Working Group to help sort through usability issues and generate a consensus for devs to subsequently implement.
I would think it would be beneficial to the companies that make 3D printers and CNC machines to help fund some of these efforts... I've found it often takes the input of commercial interests to get general UX improvements into open-source.
ex: really impressed with the direction of Audacity as an example, though I can also understand why a given community would reject such influence from a single org.
> I think it is unfair to say that they are "blinded to the pain".
I mean it more in the sense that it's very difficult to truly conceive of what a new user of the app would stumble over or dislike, if you're very used to it yourself.
Often that means small things that would not be that hard to address become invisible, because there's obvious higher priorities. Other times, things are considered small fries that actually are consistently wrong and need a holistic re-think.
One of the best things to do is to actually watch novice users use your software. This was also a big boost to the "Blender moment", when the Blender studio started inviting over artist and just watched them work in the software. This used to be really hard to do, but has now become a bit easier with screencasting and conferencing tools. I bet FreeCAD is also starting to do more of this.
Thanks for adding additional info! I forgot to mention the Design Working Group as another sign. In KDE we also set up a similar "Visual Design Group" years ago that was behind a lot of the improvements.
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