Blender user here. I think you got it right, and FreeCAD is probably your best bet. Maybe give it a second chance.

OpenSCAD is in a different category, it’s more like a coding tool or software library. There are other options if you’re into that, e.g. build123d.

I can’t use FreeCAD myself, but then I don’t have a mechanical engineering background, so I was also learning the basic CAD workflow when I tried it. At work my colleagues (who occasionally 3D print some part) seem happy with it, and keep telling me I should use a proper CAD to design parts.

Personally I’m happy with Blender, using it for my hobby 3D print designs. Most have some playful/artistic touch in addition to being functional, and Blender shines at that. But you totally can do a parametric design in Blender natively, it just won’t be a CAD workflow with the constraint solver you expect. The CAD plugins I have tried felt experimental. The native tools are very solid, and Blender is very polished and mature. But it is targeting expert users (including teams, since you asked about that). Learning Blender is an investment, it took me a long time. If you are still curious, look for a video demo/tutorial of someone designing a 3D part in Blender. Don’t just open it and expect to be able to do stuff, you will not figure out on your own which tools/modifiers you should use.

(And since you didn’t say what kind of CAD, also check out KiCad if you are doing PCBs!)

Well the problem is trying to attach the concept of “done” to a bitstream. You can release it, but then the release is “done”, not the software. You can evaluate software only in a specific cultural context, where it can be useful or not. Software is more similar to a law than to a fabricated pencil. Laws are updated and re-interpreted as the culture around them evolves, and they are “done” when the culture is done.

I like this quote:

The more we see creative software engineering as monotonous ticket crunching instead of learning and experimentation, the more we compare producing software to building houses. With that analogy, you can only go wrong. (Niko Heikkilä)

In other words, a factory product is “done” when it passes QA. You can try to apply the same productivity mentality to software (or to laws) but it just doesn’t make sense, because those are instructions how to do things, and not products to be consumed. It’s not a factory product, it’s a living cultural process.

Easy: Most software is done when nobody uses it any more.

If the code you wrote 10 years ago still isn’t quite done yet, you should celebrate. If someone still cares enough to consider it broken, or can think of improvements, it means that it is useful. In contrast to: finished and done with.

I see where this comes from, but it’s funny because F-Droid is the very last place where I expect this to happen. Right after hell freezes over. Imagine them listing their own app with an anti-feature from their list: https://f-droid.org/docs/Anti-Features/

Yes. I’m here for the long tail, the niche communities. And what do I see? Not enough photos of houseplants! Come on, you must have some too. And to add to the list, !books@lemmy.world looks nice.

I like Pl@ntNet. Except for the time it told me “Not a plant. Maybe fungi?” Technically correct, but…

The only thing I noticed is that the size of the pot has a huge effect on its growth.

Apart from that, I have no idea what I’m doing right. It may be the sunny, south-facing window. I have harvested several pineapple fruits over the years. They seem to be absolutely unstoppable and unkillable and predictable in their growth here. They don’t care about seasons (it’s snowing!). The only time I managed to kill one is when I put the pot outside in summer - it went bad in just three days.

Older photos: https://log2.ch/gal/ananas/

I’m still proud of my rendering of the logistic map. It was mostly just to learn more Rust, but it rendered this beatuiful picture with relatively little code. And mostly by accident, I didn’t know I would get those cool shadows!