Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: SolidWorks is cool, sort of (but FreeCAD might be better)
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:14:44 -0700
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On 6/23/2025 10:26 AM, Crash Gordon wrote:
> On 6/22/2025 5:10 PM, Don Y wrote:
> 
>> You might want to chase down an ancient (40 year old) copy of Wintek's
>> smARTWORK.
> 
> HiWire (schematics) and smARTWORK (PCBs) were as awesome as they were because 
> they were written by hardware engineers for internal use (Wintek's main 
> products were 8051 dev boards) and later made into products in their own 
> right.  As such, I'll bet the code was pretty awful :-) but the programs were a 
> dream to use.  with HiWire you just basically thought your schematic onto the 
> screen.

smARTWORK did very little *for* you -- beyond the graphics of pads, silkscreens
and traces.  And, had a lot of "geometry" limitations.

But, it was REALLY easy to use, if you assumed responsibility for placing every
component and pad "unaided"/"unadvised".

I suspect the code was actually pretty trivial!  It was the ultimate in terms
of gridded tool; each "cell" had only a few possible ways of being drawn
(for a large value of "few"):  empty, top layer wire traveling horizontally,
top layer wire traveling vertically, bottom layer wire traveling
horizontally, bottom layer wire traveling vertically, top horizontal with
bottom vertical, top vertical with bottom horizontal, top doglegging north,
top doglegging south, etc.

So, the software just saw each cell as being in a specific state (i.e.,
which of the N graphic depictions POSSIBLE is used, here) and the
user's actions (when the cursor had the cell selected) altered the
possible NEW state of that cell.

In theory, one could have pre-drawn each possible cell representation
and then just pasted them from memory onto the screen (or, algorithmically
do that at runtime -- for very little effort).

But, it was inexpensive (I had a buddy who relied on it for relatively
low-tech designs) and easy to make changes.

It had NO DRC capabilities (that was handled by the implicit design of
each "cell possibility").  And, ripping things up was a purely manual
effort -- you really had to be sure of what you wanted and WHERE you
wanted it!

I often got a call in the wee hours of the morning to help him "check"
his layout against his schematic (something dreadfully boring and
error-prone if done by a single person).

[I recall him moving to using AutoCAD 2 (long before MEP) but that
may have only been for schematics?]

> I used HiWire to lay out the ceiling tiles for a kitchen remodel.

I did similarly (with AutoCAD) to layout the floor tiles, here,
taking into account the thickness of the grout lines between them.
In addition to getting a good "count", it also lets you decide
where the "key" tiles should be located for maximum visual effect.

E.g., if you just "start anywhere", then you may discover that
the tiles travel down a hallway "off-center" -- much more noticeable
than if you had centered the tiles in the hallway FIRST and let the
tiles in the larger "other" rooms land where they may.

I also used the same "house floorplan" to document the locations
(and branch circuits) of each electrical fixture and all of the
network drops I've installed.  It looks much more professional
than a "sketch" of dubious proportions.  And, lets me group
items of related types so I can choose which subsets to show
in a given rendering (e.g., "show me all of the camera drops")

I used Illustrator to design the models for my gesture recognizer.
I could just "draw" a gesture (e.g., a "bowtie", a "box", a "spiral",
the digit '3', etc.) and then *extract* the few lines of PostScript
from the file that actually define that "path" -- instead of
trying to create those textual representations from scratch.

Knowing how your tools work gives you insights into how they
can be (ab)used to your advantage!