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From: john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,comp.sys.raspberry-pi
Subject: Re: SolidWorks is cool, sort of (but FreeCAD might be better)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2025 19:16:49 -0700
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On Fri, 20 Jun 2025 01:46:26 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

>On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 13:46:21 -0700, john larkin wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 01:36:44 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
>> <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> But you said “Edrawings is pretty good but needs a painful
>>> re-licensing ordeal roughly twice a week. For every computer you
>>> use it on.”
>>
>> Not really twice a week. It times out in about a year, and it also
>> refuses to open .SLDASM files that were created by a more recent
>> version of SolidWorks.
>
>So it hasn’t been keeping up with SolidWorks? Not really a good
>substitute, then.

Sure it keeps up. But you have to update it to import a file created
with a recent version of SolidWorks.

It always works with Step files.


>
>> But most software and things like security camera services and many
>> web sites are increasingly annoying.
>
>Make that “most *proprietary* software”.
>
>>>> SolidWorks is expensive ...
>>>
>>> My point exactly.
>>
>> Not too expensive for my guys to use to design things. Just too
>> expensive to use as a viewer. They could send me screen shots, but
>> it's fun to zoom and spin things around myself, which Edrawings
>> does. And it has the measure feature, so I can verify dimensions.
>
>Does it have fly-through/walk-through modes?
>
>> It does all that cool stuff apparently instantaneously, even on the
>> wimpiest laptop without fancy graphics hardware.
>
>That’s not a big deal any more.
>
>>><https://www.kicad.org/>
>>
>> We use PADS. We've been using it since the DOS days when there was
>> basically nothing else.
>
>Seems like it’s still around, but it’s gone cloud-only.

Not for us. We purchased six copies outright.


>
><https://sourceforge.net/software/compare/KiCad-EDA-vs-PADS-Professional/>
>
>Apparently KiCAD got some investment money from CERN.
>
><https://www.reddit.com/r/KiCad/comments/wy20gi/wanting_to_switch_from_pads_to_kicad_is_it/>