Mabe try and make only one CAD project around OpenCascade ?

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Hello , please look at my comment in the FreeCAD project forum :
https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/free-cad/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=98 . The
project looks more advanced than heekscad , has 3 active developers , wants
to do mostly the same thing except with Qt instead of wxwidgets and has a
wider visibility online among CAD enthusiasts . Anyway I think only one CAD
project based on OpenCascade can succeed and the other will fade away .

Original issue reported on code.google.com by brancoli...@gmail.com on 14 Aug 2009 at 8:40

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I just posted this to that forum:

Hello,

My name is Dan Heeks. I started HeeksCAD ( http://code.google.com/p/heekscad/ 
). I
release it under the BSD license.
It uses OpenCASCADE and wxWidgets.

I looked at FreeCAD, but I didn't like the Qt license at the time; it was GPL, 
or
commercial.

I wanted to make a simple CAD system that could be used as the basis for 
commercial
CAD/CAM products and for free CAD/CAM.
I am using HeeksCAD to develop a commercial Wire EDM CAD/CAM application for a 
German
software company, so I am not going to stop developing it overnight.

With HeeksCAD, there are at least 3 people regularly contributing code to it.
We use the #cam IRC channel on FreeNode to chat about any kind of CAD/CAM.

One of you FreeCAD guys should come to the #cam channel and persuade some of 
the guys
there to start using FreeCAD instead of HeeksCAD; then I will think about making
HeeksCNC ( my free CAD/CAM ) work using FreeCAD.

You said: "only one can succeed".
This is not necessarily true. There is room for similar but different products.
It is great that they are open source projects, because we can copy the bits we 
like
from each others projects.
I will try to have another look at FreeCAD when I have the time. I couldn't do 
much
with it when I tried it 1 year ago.

Dan.

Original comment by danhe...@gmail.com on 14 Aug 2009 at 9:13

• Changed state: Accepted

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I have used both and I have found that HeeksCAD/CNC is far more useful for my
purposes. I can actually get things done with it. I like the concept of FreeCAD 
but I
think Heeks is moving at a much faster pace. I also don't think that there has 
to be
'one' project that succeeds. In fact, I can think of a third project that I hope
succeeds along with Heeks and FreeCAD- pyOCC. 

Original comment by ddfalck2...@yahoo.com on 14 Aug 2009 at 9:28

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Indeed, there are already many open source programs which basically do the same 
thing, like gnome/kde/xfce, gtk/qt/wxwidgets and konqueror/firefox. I also 
looked at 
FreeCAD a little, but HeeksCAD/CNC was a way more useful and active project.

Original comment by celeron55@gmail.com on 14 Aug 2009 at 11:02

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Original comment by jonpry@gmail.com on 23 Sep 2009 at 7:44

• Changed state: WontFix