I guess what I mean is that if the likes of huge defence contractors / automotive industry etc put weight into developing a open kernel and tooling at a volume similar to that of paying for licenses to Autodesk, then they could build their own hyper focussed CAD solution, and the rest of us could be "off to the races" without the upfront cost ACIS or Parasolid.
A huge contractor in the defence and automotive industries does control an open kernel and CAD tooling: OpenCascade is owned by CapGemini. And they do build focussed CAD solutions in it (e.g. SALOME and other tools.)
Several open source CAD packages use it(FreeCAD, Cadseer, Dune3D, SALOME Shaper, KiCAD, CadQuery/Build123D, DeclaraCAD etc.)
There are firms using it for bespoke naval and aerospace applications.
The reality is CAD kernels are incredibly difficult, multi-decade projects, and part of the issue is a lot of the domain expertise in them is literally dying off or retiring.
” The reality is CAD kernels are incredibly difficult, multi-decade projects, and part of the issue is a lot of the domain expertise in them is literally dying off or retiring.”
Well, they are complex but not impossible. I understand for example zoo.dev just wrote their own.
I also understand tinkercad and womp wrote their own geometry solvers.
Not sure how to compare the above with OpenCascade (since, like you said, it’s pretty complex & public and the others are not public) but at least one can accurately say ”you can absolutely write a 3d modeler from scratch”.
” rest of us could be "off to the races" without the upfront cost ACIS or Parasolid.”
Just start coding your CAD tool dude if you want to! You can totally start with OpenCascade.
All these kernels do is they
1) define tensor product surfaces (usually NURBs) with trimming curves
2) join these surface patches to watertight solids
3) export STEP (non-AM) or STL (AM)
The question is which hardware manufacturing path is the one you know so well you know what the important things are?
And the dirty secret here is that the 3D is _not_ the hardest part (it’s hard sure). You soon end up with schema management and database management as well as domain model challenges that are quite complicated. The main problem here will be that you can’t just start coding without knowing where you end up. You need to know _every step_ or you will end up in a quagmire that is no better than existing tools (slow, buggy). It’s totally doable but the total complexity will be non-trivial and the decisions you make year 1 will come haunt you and bite you in the ass year 5. Be prepared!
And for those coming outside to this - I’m not being glib! A 3D design tool totally can be a one man show to start with (see NomadSculpt, Plasticity or MagicaVoxel for example).
” I guess what I mean is that if the likes of huge defence contractors / automotive industry etc…”
I’m not sure what you are getting at.
These companies created what we call CAD starting from the 1950’s or so (research Parson’s NC work at MIT, Bezier’s work later at Renault if you want a wikipedia tour of the early years).
The current industry isn’t shaped like this because Dassault, Siemens and Autodesk decided to go all incumbent. They were more or less pushed to do so by market forces and industrial history (and if it was not them some other company would be the incumbents).
