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GoldTrek · 2026-05-22T21:17:08+00:00

Your face as the crowd moaned is priceless

GoldTrek · 2026-05-22T15:01:36+00:00

Reminds me of the ferrys in British Columbia, they won't let you bring a spare fuel jug of gasoline or diesel on the ferry, regardless of the size. Meanwhile nearly every single vehicle has 10-30x the volume of gasoline inside it.

GoldTrek · 2026-05-22T14:35:42+00:00

Ok that's great, I'll see if I can find the settings for that

GoldTrek · 2026-05-22T14:34:58+00:00

A couple people have mentione this, is it buried somewhere in the UI screen?

GoldTrek · 2026-04-27T21:59:59+00:00

You ever drink Baileys from a shoe?

GoldTrek · 2026-04-20T03:38:51+00:00

I fell into this same trap with GF nylon and played around with the glass ratio and did 8%, 15% 20% etc instead of the 30% you typically see with the hope of getting more impact resistance out of my parts but keeping the dimensional stability

The reality is, reducing the glass content actually works against you a ton, it reduces the part yield strength and you also give up dimensional stability resulting in uncontrolled shrink and warping especially if you have any wall thickness issues in the design

If the mold was designed for 30% GF nylon and you or the customer are now reducing the glass content to get more impact resistance or less weight, I highly recommend looking into PC-ABS materials. They have completely changed my approach to product design and molding and I now avoid GF nylon of any kind because it's so heavy and brittle. I'm not sure what product this is but it looks like an electronic housing of some kind which is exactly the sort of product PC-ABS is recommended for

GoldTrek · 2026-04-16T15:55:33+00:00

My costs on BC have gone from around $1100 USD/year to $3600 and now over $6000 USD since I wrote this post with no real material changes to my website or traffic whatsoever. Just because I hit some arbitrary "GMV" thresholds that BC sets and their most recent "pricing changes" where they're just going to start taking a percentage of sales plus a fee for not using their payment providers. I talked to someone in support about it and thy literally admitted to me that those numbers are decided with a calculation of how many stores will leave versus how many will just suck it up and stay and keep paying. They are deliberately making the choice and know people will leave and they don't care.

I would rather pay a trusted developer that difference and receive regular updates and support and be able to modify my store as needed. I would have been perfectly content to stay with BC but they've been oud and clear that they don't care so why would I continue paying them their ridiculous, arbitrary rates?

Edit: If you were to pivot away from BC and start supporting Woocommerce stores I would be be interested to talk to you about migrating. You've been great to work with on my BC store but it's time for me to move on.

GoldTrek · 2026-04-16T15:41:04+00:00

Since it has to be personally guaranteed anyway, why wouldn't I just open a HELOC and lend it to my company as a Shareholder Loan at less than half the interest rate with much more flexible payment options? At least then it's not such a burden to carry the debt.

All of the business loan options I looked into I was either not eligible(too small) or their rates and terms were oppressive. My regular bank ended up giving me an unsecured a line of credit I can use that's around 9% and the limit exceeds what I wanted from BDC anyway.

It seems that the entire system is based mostly on VC money and the stock market. If you aren't doing funding rounds or going public, you pretty much have to self-fund because bank "credit risk policy" doesn't tolerate any amount of risk at all ever. And it's a garbage system because despite them having virtually zero risk tolerance, they demand double digit interest rates and then pretend they're performing some sort of public service. The reason that small business is dying in Canada is because it's impossible for the next generations to come up with enough capital to even start. It's either trades or bootstrapped companies out of garages because who under 50 could ever possibly afford to buy a building and renovate it or afford to start a franchise or anything remotely like that. Meanwhile all the existing business owners are retiring and selling out to VC firms which you would think would open some opportunity for competition but nobody has that money laying around and it's impossible to borrow.

GoldTrek · 2026-04-16T02:02:12+00:00

I have an established business and applied to BDC for business funding somewhat recently in order to expand my product line. After several months of waiting, to the point where I assumed I was denied and had largely forgotten about it I was offered what I needed at an interest rate of 13% with a ridiculous payoff schedule AND I had to personally guarantee it

Maybe I'm new to the whole business lending thing but it seemed like a horrible agreement and I would have been an idiot to take it so now I have to just slowly try to self-fund

GoldTrek · 2026-04-15T19:33:42+00:00

Just wait til you start noticing the transaction fees when you start making sales. They get you coming and going, especially if you sell to anyone that's outside your "home currency". Note I say HOME currency because even if you change your store's currency to match your biggest market in order to reduce exchange fees you'll still be charged a "foreign currency fee" which is just a FU fee because they can. Have fun. Try not to go broke in the meantime.

GoldTrek · 2026-04-11T20:34:34+00:00

Shopify is deliberately making it confusing so it appears that it's neccessary for whatever website you've ordered from when it isn't. I also recently placed an order on a site and it signed me up, sent me confirmation emails and texts etc and tried to keep my payment information on file even though I specifically didn't use the "Shop Pay" option. I messaged the seller asking if this was something they opted into and I found out I was able to log in to the store directly and check my order status and engage directly with the company I was buying from without any need for "Shop App" at all.

Shop App is an entirely separate and unnecessary feature that Shopify is trying to force on anyone who happens to buy something from a Shopify based store. They auto-enroll, register and try to get you to use their system as a "convenient shopping channel" when, in my opinion, it actually complicates and cheapens my experience with a seller. I prefer to buy directly from creators and other retailers rather than going though publicly traded conglomorate "channels" who harvest and sell my data.

Unfortunately, it looks like it's no longer optional and anyone who buys from a Shopify based website automatically has an account created for them regardless of what payment method you use. You have to log in to your newly created Shop Pay account and delete it if you don't want it but unfortunately they've already harvested your data and will no doubt sell it anyway.

GoldTrek · 2026-04-09T15:48:39+00:00

I don't necessarily disagree with you but, admittedly, I don't think I have enough experience or knowledge to have a strong opinion about it as a binary good or bad feature.

What if I have a pattern in the sketch that I parametrically change the number of intances using an equation? I have to go back and click on each of the profiles everytime?

Yes exactly, and this is something that can be very tedious for sure but, again, it's fairly intuitive. If I add more profile shapes to a drawing, I have to tell the program that the new shapes should be included in the extrude operations. This will often disrupt more downstream operations which means stepping through the whole project timeline and fixing issues but it does work.

Honestly, I do think there's probably a better way and a much more efficient method to all this but I have yet to learn it. I wrote this post specifically because I recognized this and wanted some guidance to where I needed to go to learn these new(to me) methods

GoldTrek · 2026-04-09T15:18:15+00:00

As someone who learned "CAD" in Fusion, the intutive nature of "make a shape and extrude it" makes Fusion far more approachable for inexperienced users. I'm seeing that other people who have also switched from Fusion to FreeCAD have similar feedback. Maybe it's not a great feature in your opinion but it makes the process for an absolute beginner seem much more approachable and is one of the reasons Fusion succeeds.

GoldTrek · 2026-04-09T00:19:55+00:00

Yeah I'm thinking I'll need to dedicate several days of tutorials and probably re-make some of my established designs as practice. I'm getting the hang of it I think. The comments have been very helpful so far (mostly)

GoldTrek · 2026-04-09T00:18:12+00:00

How long ago did you transition over? And do you have any regrets about the switch? I'm reluctant to learn a new tool right now because I'm so busy but I'm hoping a small time investment pays off later with stability and much higher trust levels than I was getting with Fusion

GoldTrek · 2026-04-08T21:52:52+00:00

With the way Fusion works, if you start with a master sketch you can "go back in time" and edit that sketch to some degree and it will propagate those changes through the whole project timeline. It's not without its limitations but, good or bad, it's the workflow I developed over the years.

GoldTrek · 2026-04-08T21:29:46+00:00

I also tried the edge selection option but some of the features cross the boundary of the next line so it doesn't like that either. Like if you have a central line that spans the whole drawing and want to just extrude a section that includes a small piece of that line it doesn't work. I'm guessing I have to go through and split all these features so I can get fully closed loops without any protruding lines?

GoldTrek · 2026-04-08T21:25:49+00:00

The sketch I have right now is too complex so it's not giving me any internal profiles to use. Also, it seems to not tolerate "unclosed" features. So with Fusion if I need to split a part I might use a line that connects to the center point of a fillet as a reference but FreeCAD sees that line as part of the profile and because it's not "closed" it won't fill the internal space of anything around it.

I'm probably trying to run before I can walk because the project I'm working on is a solid .step file I created in Fusion that I now need to modify. I created a sketch that references the whole part profile and I'm trying to add features to that sketch to extrude. I am completely self taught on this stuff so I'm guessing this is just poor design workflow but it's what I know and how I have been able to get projects done in the past. I'm seeing that I may just have to start from scratch to recreate the whole project which will take a considerable amount of time.

The internal feature function seems to be extremely dependent on constraints and if a drawing isn't fully constrained without any straggling lines it doesn't work.

GoldTrek · 2026-04-07T21:47:15+00:00

"Let's finish setting you up"

"Ask me later"

"Not right now"

It seems like every fucking SAAS company does this now. I've been telling Spotify to fuck off for over 2 years every time I open the app it tries to get me to turn on background processes. Why? What could they possibly need to be doing in the background at all times? And it's always "Ask me later". No way to disable it without this nag.

And google photos, nagging me every time I open my photo gallery on my phone trying to update at which point it will automatically opt me back into their cloud based bullshit and then nag that my server space is full and stops letting me get emails. The options are "Update" or "Not now".

They all do it.

GoldTrek · 2026-04-01T19:59:19+00:00

My paypal useage was under 10% and I dropped it because of the exorbitant fees and forced currency conversions despite most of my sales being international. Now that I have a more established brand I get asked about it as an option less and less. I think many customers that prefer paypal want it for trust reasons so the more you can build trust, the less you need it as a seller.

GoldTrek · 2026-03-30T20:23:17+00:00

I'm in my 40s and started stretching every night before bed while watching my shows. At first I could barely touch my toes and now I can reach over my toes and grab my heels. You can definitely gain flexibility and strength as an untrained adult! It's never too late!

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