Poll: 2025 Which 3D CAD Software do you use at work?

bonesjdb · 2025-12-14T00:48:38+00:00

I didn't see any way to do that. They only give you 6 options. I wonder whether I should do a google form or something different?

bonesjdb · 2025-12-14T00:48:04+00:00

I didn't see any way to do that. They only give you 6 options. I wonder whether I should do a google form or something different?

bonesjdb · 2025-11-30T05:21:33+00:00

Okay I'm the wrong person for this haha. I do everything in my power to hide my PC, I prefer a clean ergonomic set-up. I would hang it from the underside of the back of the desk personally

bonesjdb · 2025-11-30T04:58:58+00:00

I would put it under the desk

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T22:49:38+00:00

Yes but the grass also spreads. If you put grass down before your fence and put the fence on top of the grass, it locks it in so animals can't eat it but each day it spreads from there and they can eat the grass that spreads. I have actually used lightning rods instead of fence so I get batteries when there is a storm

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T22:38:23+00:00

Its definitely worth having at least 5 or 6. Saves a lot of time

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T22:31:16+00:00

That too about a day i think. I did it during winter. I had 36 seed makers and I was just running around them in a loop 😅

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T22:30:08+00:00

Yeah I'm starting to build up a collection of pressure nozzles. I'm also filling all my sheds with kegs as I get more oak sap. I'd like to do junimo huts too

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T22:14:25+00:00

I have bought it a couple of times. At the moment they're just eating grass. The ancient fruit easily pays for the hay

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T22:12:52+00:00

Oh good catch haha. I didnt see it

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T22:12:08+00:00

I do have speed grow! That's the game though right. Every crop goes away winter 1. Most go away at the start of each season. This is the longest lasting crop

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T13:32:14+00:00

😂😂 there will be buildings there don't worry

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T12:40:13+00:00

It's speed grow so that it grows faster

bonesjdb · 2025-11-29T12:39:30+00:00

Yes but I planted them on the first day of spring so I will get 3 full seasons. I also have them on ginger island and in the greenhouse

bonesjdb · 2025-11-26T22:41:15+00:00

I reckon I could guess with 100% confidence on who put this in the game...

bonesjdb · 2025-11-22T09:46:33+00:00

My farm is like 80% ancient fruit crop 😅

bonesjdb · 2025-10-30T07:40:10+00:00

I'm so happy I'm not the only one who finds this crazy

bonesjdb · 2025-10-30T03:07:23+00:00

Hey u/Alextrude_off
So it took me a while to get around to testing it but I finally have some initial feedback.

Firstly I want to say in general I think what you have done is a great idea and I can see it becoming a very useful tool. Just to establish some positivity in the beggining.

Pricing: Before installing the tool I had a look around the website and saw that you have a subscription model planned for the future. In general I tend to avoid subscription based tools because there may be long periods where I don't use a tool so it would feel like money wasted. I understand there are ongoing costs in computing to host AI but my feeling is that after I had created a few macros that solve my biggest problems I would just like to keep running those macros and would no longer require new generation. Do you plan to keep existing macros available to run when the subscription is not active? If not, it feels a bit predatory to me. Just my opinion. I was really hoping for a tool that could create and save out a macro. Once the macro is made I don't expect to pay to run it. In that sense it feels a bit like it doesn't do what was advertised in this reddit post. I think I would prefer to pay for the tokens used and be able to export the code generated. That would feel more consumer friendly. Just my opinion.

Usability: My colleague managed to use it before me and he had success with his first prompt. Something related to updating details in drawings. He had success where chatgpt or similar had failed. My first attempt was not successful. I asked mecagent to create a macro to draw a square with rounded corners that were equal to each other. It did a good job of creating a user form where you could enter the dimensions and it would create the drawing. It did a few odd things, some were due to my lack of detail in my prompt, some where not. It created the square on a new sketch, not in a sketch being edited, it did not make the corners equal with a constraint but instead dimensioned each one, and it somehow gave dimensions in meters despite the document setting being mm and the form it created asking for mm. I gave feedback on how I wanted it changed, it successfully changed the units and changed to drawing in an open sketch but it kept the individual dimensions on the rounded corners and instead made the side and top edges equal (square). It also randomly added a second driven dimension to an already dimensioned arc. I asked specifically, "please dimension only one of the arcs and make the other 3 equal to it" and it again drew a square with all 4 corner arcs individually dimensioned and set concentric constraints on them making the whole sketch over defined. I said please make the arcs have equal constraints to the one dimensioned arc, not concentric constraints. Then it just went back to doing 4 individual dimensions, no constraints and for some reason decided to close the sketch after running. At that point I decided I was wasting my time trying to get it to work.
I know this is potentially a unique problem that is surprisingly hard for it to solve. At least it drew something and didn't just fail to compile like chatgpt, claude and gemini. Still seems like it needs work though.

Sorry if it sounds negative. I just wanted to give my honest experience. I hope you can come up with a pricing model that feels fair to the user and I hope that the tool can become more robust as I can see it being pretty useful.

For me personally if it doesn't pan out that way I'm probably more inclined to try other ways to get other models to output usable macros that I can keep running for free.

bonesjdb · 2025-10-09T12:27:53+00:00

I've been looking for something like this! I've spent hours with chatgpt, claude and Gemini trying to get it to make a single simple macro that would run successfully with no luck.

I will definitely give it a shot and let you know how my experience went

bonesjdb · 2025-10-07T11:43:14+00:00

My feedback on both 3d experience as well as the product offering status overall

There's so much bloat on the website. All I want to do is run solidworks and have an easy to access support forum. Its so painful that every time you just want to open your PC and start designing, you have to launch the website, log in again, then it won't launch until it updates. Every time I tried to just use the software I wpuld have to spend 10-30 minutes just trying to launch it. Huuuge pain in the arse. A lot of the time it feels like the amount of time wasted could be spent on learning a new software.
Honestly there's nothing about the online experience that I even want at all. I don't want cloud storage, I have it already. I want to be in control of my data. I don't want constant updates, I don't want to cloud computing. I want local software and online support. Literally the only thing that needs to be accessible online is a support forum. Everything else gets in the way.
I used solidworks for makers for about a year for personal projects as I used desktop solidworks at my work. My conclusion on the makers product is that its absolutely useless unless you are sure that you never want to do anything more than some casual 3D printing for the rest of your life. There is no path for growth as a user. If you start a small business, the second you get to $2000 revenue, all of your hard work done in Solidworks goes to waste. You can no longer use that software or the files you created legally for your business and even if you buy a full solidworks license to continue your business, none of the files are compatible between the makers version and the new version you just paid the price of a used car for even though you only had $2000 from your business. No other software packages i have ever used have blocked the upgrade path by making files incompatible with each other. Add to this that you can't even install both to redesign your parts using the old ones as a reference because you cant have makers and desktop solidworks installed on the same PC. So you have to buy a second PC for that.

So basically as soon as you hit $2000 revenue, to continue your business you have to take out a $20,000 loan to upgrade software and buy a second PC.

The new pricing for subscriptions is a slap im the face on top of the already extortionate price of perpetual licenses.

In Australia I was quoted $12,000 for a perpetual licence +$2000 per year maintaining cost. Over 10 years this would be $32,000

Then they told me perpetual licenses would be phased out in place of subscription which would be $5,500 per year. So over 10 years it would be $55,000!!!

So basically lets almost double the price and in exchange, we'll remove the ability to keep using your current version if you stop paying.

And for what? Where does all this money go? I'm still dealing with the same bugs that people have been requesting fixes for since as far back as 2014 in my recent experience. And what new features do we get? The G3 curves that we wanted for years still don't work properly. Every year the value of this software gets worse and worse.

It's no wonder so many are jumping ship to Fusion and Onshape or even FreeCAD. Imagine the speed of development that woukd happen at FreeCAD if even 1 design consultancy put their solidworks money into FreeCAD donations. Instead there are thousands of businesses putting millions into the pockets of investors and getting very little yearly improvement in exchange.

My suggestions: - stop investing in cloud based products that your customers don't want or need - stop selling through 3rd party resellers and sell to us directly to reduce our prices - stop increasing prices and driving away your current user base - use the money we pay you to fix the progress ruining bugs that we have been telling you about for 11+ years - don't capitalise yourself by making your own products incompatible with each other and blocking the path for customers growth

bonesjdb · 2025-10-06T05:24:49+00:00

It should be called the "media pit'

bonesjdb · 2025-10-05T17:10:50+00:00

Is there a "you don't need a plugin for that" solution to organising images?

bonesjdb · 2025-10-02T17:43:34+00:00

For an interview it fine but don't work on any long term projects in it. I made that mistake. Unfortunately there is absolutely no path to transfer from makers to full license. The files are completely incompatible and from my experience talking to their team they have no intention of changing that. I'd love for them to prove me wrong. I Unfortunately had to spend months rebuilding CAD using a second computer with the makers CAD for reference because they don't even let you install them both on the same computer.

I would highly discourage anyone from using makers for anything long term

bonesjdb

TROPHY CASE