Solvespace Alternatives

solvespace reviews and mentions

• RattleCAD
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Nov 2023

  >> Also, rattleCAD has been inspired by Linkage app.

  If you like Linkage, you might also like Solvespace.

  https://solvespace.com/

  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Nov 2023

  > If you like Linkage, you might also like Solvespace.

  No, I mean Brent Curry's Linkage[1] bicycle design software, not David Rector's Linkage Mechanism Designer and Simulator[2].

  You should read Wikipedia article.[0]

  N.B. About SolveSpace, as I'm its experienced user[youtube,patreon], I may say next: yes, it could be used for bike mockup, as any other CAD, but it still has a lot of limitations and even does not export correct STEP files yet[3], and in FreeCAD such STEP could fixed only partially.[video]

  So, for serious 3D CAD work I highly recommend use FreeCAD (and LibreCAD for 2D CAD work) instead of SolveSpace, and use SolveSpace only as a helper tool like a calc or as a notepad for noting ideas.

  About Linkage Mechanism Designer and Simulator, it is only useful for planar (2D) kinematics analyze, and if You are looking an alternative for it take a look on Pyslvs[4], that is in part based on SolveSpace's solver.

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rattleCAD#History

  [1] https://bikechecker.com/

  [2] https://blog.rectorsquid.com/linkage-mechanism-designer-and-...

  [3] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/206

  [4] https://github.com/KmolYuan/Pyslvs-UI

  [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3LJMeqUDrU

  [youtube] https://www.youtube.com/@appsoft

  [patreon] https://patreon.com/app4soft

• SolveSpace has been ported to Qt
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Oct 2023
• Ask HN: What are some of the most elegant codebases in your favorite language?
  37 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Jun 2023

  C++ this file covers all the math for working with NURBS curves and surfaces:

  https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/blob/master/src/srf...

  There is a lot more in other files - triangulation, booleans, creation - but the core math functions are there in very readable form.

• The Great CPU Stagnation
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 May 2023

  >> Maybe somebody has statistical survey of how much of the existing deployed CPU core count is typically used?

  My guess is very few cores are used on average. I did some testing with Solvespace to see which build options contributed most to performance:

  https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/972

  Obviously using OpenMP for multi-core was the big win. But what's not shown is that in typical usage (not the test I ran) if you're dragging some geometry around it will use all cores (in my case 4 cores / 8 threads) at about 50 percent utilization. That percentage probably drops as more cores are thrown at it due to Amdahl's Law. In other words, throwing double the cores at it will give a good boost to a lot of code that is already taking less than half the time (wall clock time, not CPU time).

  We added OpenMP to a number of functions for significant performance gains. And in fact, any remining single-thread operation that gets the parallel treatment is likely to have a significant impact on overall performance since that is where most of the time is spent now. At this point we're more focused on features and bugs.

  Algorithmic improvements are possible and I'd like to do those in the future, but they are much harder to do than sprinkling some #pragmas around critical loops. That will improve the scalability though, where multithreading really did not.

• Loving Solvespace
  2 projects | /r/SolveSpace | 6 Feb 2023
• FreeCAD Day 2023: Report and Continued Discussion
  5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Feb 2023

  N.B. I'm a mod of r/SolveSpace community on Reddit.[0]

  > There is a reason people love Solvespace over FreeCAD even though it is incredibly limited in comparison.

  As a SolveSpace user for nearly a decade, who started to learn FreeCAD last month, I may say that both apps has own pros'n'cons: SolveSpace has simpler UI (but lack of features for experts), while FreeCAD has a lot of features (but UI to complex for "normal" users).

  About "limited in comparison", he is may latest quick comparison of both apps:[1]

  SolveSpace is a good "Stage 1" tool for sketching ideas, while FreeCAD is more like "Stage 2" tool for converting sketch into real product. SolveSpace exported DXF (2D & 3D wireframe) & STL/OBJ (mesh) could be used as a base for FreeCAD and other apps (Blender, LibreCAD).[2]

  While SolveSpace is not a competitor to FreeCAD, it still could be used for design wide range of complex things for 3D printing or shop drawings, including assemblies.[3,4,5,6]

  The main problem of SolveSpace, is that it still has broken STEP export, as a result exported solid surfaces are non-manifold and after import into FreeCAD it is almost unusable (it may require a lot of work with "Shape builder" and "Surface" Workbench to revert it back to solid body).[7]

  There are also many NURBS & mesh issues in SolveSpace worse to fix.[8]

  [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/solvespace

  [1] https://fosstodon.org/@app4soft/109812747058078617

  [2] https://fosstodon.org/@app4soft/109813465975914195

  [3] https://fosstodon.org/@app4soft/109740222184364152

  [4] https://fosstodon.org/@app4soft/107098074104816439

  [5] https://fosstodon.org/@app4soft/109804453127760634

  [6] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1479875838451585026

  [7] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/206

  [8] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/1281

• Coolest projects, GO!
  13 projects | /r/linuxmasterrace | 21 Sep 2022
• That Annoying Shade of Blue
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Sep 2022

  https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/pull/446

  It's the blue and yellow only, but IMHO it made Solvespace a lot more readable.

• Usability
  2 projects | /r/FreeCAD | 9 Sep 2022
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  getonboard.dev | 3 Dec 2023

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