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FreeCAD[1] is the most advanced in my opinion. The next release is also supposed to solve the longstanding topological naming issue, and finally be the first 1.0 version.
[1]https://www.freecad.org/
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
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I'm aware, however there have been a couple efforts now to introduce CAD tooling into Blender.
https://github.com/hlorus/CAD_Sketcher
https://github.com/EleotleCram/blender-cad-tools
I'm not suggesting that they are ready for professional use, just that I don't think the Autodesk moat is as deep as some might assume, and that if there was a concerted community effort Blender could accomplish those tasks.
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blender-cad-tools
a collection of Blender addons to make CAD design with Blender even more enjoyable
I'm aware, however there have been a couple efforts now to introduce CAD tooling into Blender.
https://github.com/hlorus/CAD_Sketcher
https://github.com/EleotleCram/blender-cad-tools
I'm not suggesting that they are ready for professional use, just that I don't think the Autodesk moat is as deep as some might assume, and that if there was a concerted community effort Blender could accomplish those tasks.
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> Couldn't you equivalently use any STL/STEP/AMF viewer?
I'm not sure. A quick feedback loop is important. With OpenSCAD and CadQuery, you write code that defines the geometry. You then want to see what the geometry looks like, and possibly debug it. For this, you generally want to be able to give certain parts a different color, or opacity, wireframe, etc.
STL is out; it has to tessellate geometry turning it into triangles. AFAIK, it only supports one object. This means a sensible wireframe is out, and so are multiple parts. AMF has similar drawbacks. STEP files might work.
Generally, my understanding is many people write OpenSCAD code in their editor of choice, and then simply save the file. When you open an existing file in OpenSCAD GUI, it monitors it for changes, and refreshes. So this is great.
That said, I misspoke a bit. CQ-Editor is definitely somewhat close to OpenSCAD. It still has a - in my view - unnecessary code editor. But the last standalone release is over a year ago, and I found it to be extremely buggy on macOS. It crashes quite often. Meanwhile, Jupyer-CadQuery [0] works great.
> Seems a good choice to me that the GUI is a separate/subordinate project. I suppose it is somewhat necessary to have it at all, easier to gain popularity if you can show screenshots and have a single app 'quickstart'.
Generally, I think this is true. My personal opinion is I can be productive with something that has a minimal set of features but is rock-solid; over something that has gobs of features but is buggy. That was my main issue with FreeCAD. Ease of installation is another big one. For all it's issues, OpenSCAD gets both of these things right.
[0] https://github.com/bernhard-42/jupyter-cadquery/
