CAD is a huge pain point for me as well. I used all sorts of packages from PTC when it was still called Pro/E to the Autodesk 3D solutions with a stint of NX in between. Nothing that works on Linux that isn’t o shape is usable for me. I genuinely tried working with freecad but it doesn’t fit me.
Freecad can’t keep up with professional software with decades of paid development, sadly. It has gone very fast these past 2-3 years compared to being relatively slow before that, but now the SaaS company supporting them is bankrupt so who knows.
KiCAD on the other hand, is like 50% or more of the way there to match commercial offerings and is mostly missing QoL and productivity features
I think some things are very necessary for medium or bigger companies:
Dynamic Drill Tables, stackup in the spec layer and DRC import export NOT importing from other projects (and not the “DRC file” thing that does not transfer back into the GUI)
Fonts
Technical assembly drawing exports
I use it weekly in my own time, but it is difficult to get everyone “synced” on it.
It won’t be a big bang, but a gradual change. It has already started.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german-state-gov-ditching-windows-for-linux-30k-workers-migrating/
I’m transitioning my company away from Microsoft.
Only CAD stations will remain under Microsoft and so far, is going well.
CAD is a huge pain point for me as well. I used all sorts of packages from PTC when it was still called Pro/E to the Autodesk 3D solutions with a stint of NX in between. Nothing that works on Linux that isn’t o shape is usable for me. I genuinely tried working with freecad but it doesn’t fit me.
Freecad can’t keep up with professional software with decades of paid development, sadly. It has gone very fast these past 2-3 years compared to being relatively slow before that, but now the SaaS company supporting them is bankrupt so who knows.
KiCAD on the other hand, is like 50% or more of the way there to match commercial offerings and is mostly missing QoL and productivity features
Agreed. I actually prefer Kicad to Altium. For the things I do it is more than sufficient.
I think some things are very necessary for medium or bigger companies:
Dynamic Drill Tables, stackup in the spec layer and DRC import export NOT importing from other projects (and not the “DRC file” thing that does not transfer back into the GUI)
Fonts
Technical assembly drawing exports
I use it weekly in my own time, but it is difficult to get everyone “synced” on it.