Hacker News: jwagenet

New comment by jwagenet in "Build123d: A Python CAD programming library"

jwagenet — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:03:15 +0000

Parent was complaining about the lack of a built in sketch constraint solver in build123d, which is table stake feature of any "real" GUI CAD suite. build123d has some constraint options and you could probably use solvespace with it. Of course you can roll your own.

New comment by jwagenet in "Build123d: A Python CAD programming library"

jwagenet — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:11:20 +0000

The reality is build123d is a fairly thin layer over the OCCT kernel with some pythonic affordances. I'm not sure OCCT has a robust constraint solver, so there is little development there. FreeCAD on the other hand (besides being significantly more mature) is also build on OCCT, but also does a lot on top of the kernel to make it more featured and stable.

New comment by jwagenet in "Windows native app development is a mess"

jwagenet — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 18:16:26 +0000

Maybe I grew up with Windows so the older uis don’t phase me, but I find these sort of complaints rich considering differences between gtk, qt, etc in Linux userland. The average Windows user might stumble on an aero dialog, which is arguably less jarring in win11 than og metro.

New comment by jwagenet in "Banned in California"

jwagenet — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 12:52:51 +0000

> Aluminum Anodizing & CNC Machining

There are a ton of CNC machining (AL and otherwise) and anodizing shops in the Bay Area.

New comment by jwagenet in "Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?"

jwagenet — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:00:06 +0000

I understand people don't like this kind of OCR stuff for privacy reasons, but selecting text from images is probably the most useful feature added to iOS in the last ~5 years for me.

New comment by jwagenet in "Show HN: AI in SolidWorks"

jwagenet — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 03:49:04 +0000

Modelling isn't the slow part. If one is copying a drawing and have exact dimensions its pretty straightforward in most software even if the software is bloated.

New comment by jwagenet in "50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player"

jwagenet — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 18:22:18 +0000

I don’t disagree. Parties are often oversold and I may be overstating the under attendance problem.

New comment by jwagenet in "50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player"

jwagenet — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 16:11:32 +0000

IMO, please continue buying records, but don’t buy tickets to shows you can’t attend. I can’t speak for live music, but in SF there is/was an issue of club nights selling out, but having low attendance due to people buying tickets as an “option”. This is a problem because it screws up venues planning for bar sales as a revenue source and deterring last minute buyers/door sales (who may either be heads or punters) who see a sold out show online.

New comment by jwagenet in "Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB"

jwagenet — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 14:36:04 +0000

GTAV had a 60GB install size over a decade ago.

New comment by jwagenet in "Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?"

jwagenet — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:18:30 +0000

I've used a Dell Precision 5530 professionally and got a 5570 refurb this year from ebay for ~$800. The fit and finish of the Precision 5000 series is great as far as I'm concerned, though I'm happy the camera is back on top of the screen and would appreciate a 10 key. The work model I used for 3 years and basically the only issue I had was on the Windows side with sleep states (waking up from sleep while commuting). I rarely work long off ac power, but <40% is always kind of a danger zone, especially when doing intensive tasks like CAD modeling. Again, worked connected to Dell workstation dock 90% of the time, so ports are not an issue, but the state of unpowered usbc dongles/micro-docks with hdmi/usba/usbc/++ makes stationary use a non-issue. I also had a 2016 XPS13 I only stopped using as a primary due to lack of ram expansion.

New comment by jwagenet in "TSMC Arizona outage saw fab halt, Apple wafers scrapped"

jwagenet — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:41:03 +0000

SV already wrecked HW engineering by paying far more for SW than market rate HW such that anyone with financial ambition made the switch long ago.

New comment by jwagenet in "µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D"

jwagenet — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 01:43:41 +0000

The hard part with 3d part creation isn’t the graphical interface or language, it’s actually describing and translating part requirements to a manufacturable design, weighing material, weight, fit, geometric, and cost tradeoffs. Openscad, opencascade, etc have been around for a long time and have specs for describing features in a way that llm should be able to handle, but if all the part constraints were available it’s far faster to make accurately in Solidworks.

New comment by jwagenet in "Blender 5.0"

jwagenet — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 23:38:51 +0000

In MCAD, “parametric” does not mean a high level part or feature is driven by editable parameters or procedurally generated features. Parametric refers to the underlying storage format representing part features in a parametric way rather than as a mesh. Mesh formats like stl cannot represent a circle by its position and radius, while a parametric format like step can. This distinction is more akin to raster (bmp) vs vector (svg) graphics. Both can be generated procedurally by “parameters”, but only with svg can sub-features be faithfully extracted or transformed.

New comment by jwagenet in "Blender 5.0"

jwagenet — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 23:31:26 +0000

The problem with FreeCAD and every other free/open source MCAD project of note is the Open Cascade kernel they are built on. While Open Cascade is fairly mature, it has dealbreaker issues in a few key areas: fillets cannot consume connected faces and may fail for a number of other reasons, cylindrical and spherical faces require seams which often cause issues with boolean operations, and shapes like helixes are also often troublesome.

New comment by jwagenet in "Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix"

jwagenet — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 23:26:24 +0000

> the fact that it costs money is absurd

Bart from SFO to downtown SF is about $11 due to a surcharge and the combined fare AirTrain + subway is also about $11.50. LIRR is a bit more expensive. The Paris RER is €13. I don’t see how the fare is objectionable.

I personally appreciate the subway connections exist. Taking LIRR would require a subway transfer to most destinations anyway.

New comment by jwagenet in "Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix"

jwagenet — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 18:58:09 +0000

I don't get the gripe. AirTrain gets you to A,E,J,Z, and LIRR, all of which get you to "Manhattan" or a significant number of intermediate destinations in about an hour. LGA is far worse.

New comment by jwagenet in "What Happened in 2007?"

jwagenet — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 02:00:34 +0000

Fine, the dips 2018-2019 could very well be noise and we don't dont know if that trend would have borne out after 2020. However, the ACT and SAT composites gradually declined following peaks in 07 and 12, respectively, given the available data.

New comment by jwagenet in "What Happened in 2007?"

jwagenet — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 13:00:56 +0000

The SAT and ACT plots indicate an accelerating downward trend beginning in 2018 though, later exacerbated by COVID.

New comment by jwagenet in "Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account"

jwagenet — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 17:55:53 +0000

> Maybe gaming

Only if you limit scope desktop gaming, sure. 75% of gaming market share is on mobile and consoles.

New comment by jwagenet in "Blender 4.5 LTS"

jwagenet — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:22:16 +0000

Yea the open cascade kernel underpinning freecad (and python libraries like build123d and cadquery) has a number of rough edges. Many can be avoided, but that unfortunately requires a bit of experience.

IMO, lofts are often not the best tool for many jobs, but planning around fillet issues can be a pain.