[HN Gopher] SteamCAD - 2D CAD designed to draw steam locomotives
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SteamCAD - 2D CAD designed to draw steam locomotives
Author : app4soft
Score : 111 points
Date : 2020-04-01 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| wiso wrote:
| The manual is a great read.
| Rexxar wrote:
| Looks interesting but the sample svg image make my Firefox
| suffers to render it.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _sample svg image make my Firefox suffers to render it_
|
| _Links2_ [0] browser render it without any issues.[1]
|
| [0] http://links.twibright.com/
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/3UXj3bh.png
| snazz wrote:
| Is that pseudo-graphical Links output just raw X or
| something? Is it a wrapper around a terminal emulator? I also
| find the "unprecedented visual experience" part on the
| homepage to be humorous.
| Shorel wrote:
| I did not even notice the time it spent rendering the image.
|
| And my laptop is far from powerful, it is an old Ryzen 5 2500u
| from two years ago.
| aussiegreenie wrote:
| Is this the most British software ever?
| vs2 wrote:
| No. A British Flag installer would be
| app4soft wrote:
| Think, SteamCAD's dev would add it into SteamCAD2[0]
|
| [0] https://github.com/oskardolch/SteamCAD2
| ppf wrote:
| That's not very British.
| [deleted]
| cpcallen wrote:
| Polish.
| TylerE wrote:
| May I submit signaling simulators?
|
| There are a number of options out there... SimSig
| (https://www.simsig.co.uk/) covers modern, fully electronic
| systems, and Blockpost (https://blockpostsoftware.co.uk/)
| covers old-school mechanical lever-frame and bell operations.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Are there any screenshots? I couldn't find them myself.
|
| The sample output is extraordinarily well-crafted.
|
| Sometimes I think I'd love to write a traditional desktop app
| like this as a side project. I haven't done it for years.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _Are there any screenshots? I couldn 't find them myself._
|
| Here is one screenshot from 2018.[0]
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1064140024822853633
| polishdude20 wrote:
| So this is just a CAD program that doesn't really have anything
| special to do with trains? It's just a barebones CAD program or
| am I missing something?
| mmastrac wrote:
| I love how specific yet comprehensive this package is. The manual
| appears to be lovingly crafted and from what I can tell, well
| written [1].
|
| I don't know how many people are specifically looking to draw CAD
| diagrams of steam locomotives, but I absolutely love that this
| was someone's itch to scratch and they put so much time into
| this.
|
| [1]
| https://github.com/oskardolch/SteamCAD/blob/master/SteamCAD....
| swalsh wrote:
| I had a coworker with an autistic son who would obsess over
| trains. He probably would love this.
| codetrotter wrote:
| If you have the contact info of said previous coworker, I
| would encourage you to contact them and tell them about this
| software. Small things like that can mean the world to people
| sometimes :)
| pkaye wrote:
| It looks like a general purpose 2D CAD though. I don't see
| anything specific to trains. Looks Interesting nonetheless.
| avhon1 wrote:
| In some sense, I agree with you -- there is nothing about
| this package that is necessarily specific to trains.
|
| However, this seems more like an art program than a CAD
| program. All it does is draw and manipulate straight and
| curved lines. It doesn't keep track of any relationships or
| properties of the lines, and it doesn't know anything about
| areas defined by the lines. SteamCAD seems like a poor
| program for developing and exploring designs, but a good
| program for presenting designs in a particular style.
|
| I found this in the manual (page 23):
|
| "SteamCAD is focused on the presentation output, not for
| creating an asset for manufacturing. So each SteamCAD work
| should be more artistic work than engineering drawing."
| avhon1 wrote:
| One related thing that struck me about SteamCAD was this
| passage from (the last page of) the manual:
|
| "5.1 What Next?
|
| Some people may be interested in what are the future plans with
| SteamCAD. The answer is there are none. SteamCAD is finished
| software (the only one in the whole computer world?), there are
| no plans to extend it. It does everything it was supposed to
| do, if there are bugs in the software, they are now features of
| the software.
|
| Well, not quite so. Of course, if the software need some
| adjustment in the future to work on new operating systems, it
| will be updated.
|
| [...]
|
| Despite what was written in the section 5.1, we have published
| a bunch of patches in November 2018. The patch includes several
| bug fixes, improved precision when snapping to objects and
| improved handling of paralel curve copies when the distance
| grows beyond the smallest curve radius."
|
| This seems like a rare example of software that is not
| abandoned, but is "finished", and will suffer no feature creep.
| It is a romantic idea, for a piece of software to be conceived
| for an exact purpose, be programmed until it exactly fulfills
| that purpose, and then just be... done, a crystal molded to its
| niche.
| nogabebop23 wrote:
| I love the ideal, but unfortunately this is only a
| characteristic of software that is not (widely) used. In a
| combination of the Peter Principle and the Big Bang, software
| will be used in an every-expanding array of uses for which it
| will attempt to add first-party support until it collapses
| under it's own mass and dies a death of ten thousand vertical
| slice competitors and the process repeats.
| zadkey wrote:
| Is it too sardonic to think that it's only a matter of time
| before Autodesk tries to buy this too?
|
| For reference:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk#Corporate_acquisition...
|
| Additional Reference: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/sardonic
| snazz wrote:
| Given that it's more a program for producing art in that style
| (as opposed to engineering new trains), they almost certainly
| won't? Especially since it's open source.
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(page generated 2020-04-01 23:00 UTC)