Avian Hang Gliders

This #freecadfriday I've been finding @freecad@social.freecad.org useful for designing a logo for our new Dynamic Cross Link (DXL) system. I know something like #blender would probably be a more suitable tool for this sort of thing, but I'm so much more competent in FreeCAD that I could knock up a 3D logo and animate it for my video in about half an hour instead of having to (re)learn Blender. I like the effect.

@Acionna@piaille.fr @FreeCAD@fosstodon.org Brilliant! For some time I've been trying to integrate Code Aster into FreeCAD, although not getting as far with it as I'd like:
https://github.com/AMRC-Composites/FreeCAD-CodeAster/tree/main

@Acionna@piaille.fr @FreeCAD@fosstodon.org yes, although I'd like to be able to do the meshing, case setup, and visualisation within FreeCAD (as already implemented for Calculix). I want to use Code Aster as it's better for shells (I need composites). I haven't used Code Saturne much, I mostly use OpenFOAM for full field CFD, through the excellent CfdOF workbench which does all the preproc. I still mostly postproc with Paraview. What are you using Code Saturne for?

@bert_hubert@eupolicy.social @concretedog@mastodon.social I think this ties is your question about why OSS engineering software isn't used in academia (and also in engineering companies, academia isn't really different to a corporation in this respect). "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" works just as well if you substitute CATIA/Creo/NX for IBM. People say they are "industry standard" (despite conforming to no "standard" in an accurate sense of the word), what they mean is "I can't be blamed for what they do/don't do".

@perthwolfman@aus.social the bloody thing attacks hang gliders also!

@anne_twain@theblower.au @pluralistic@mamot.fr another example of "even if you're paying you're still the product" is how much crap the software companies push into 'business productivity' software. Having used mainly Linux for several years I'm always shocked to see Windows (on a corporate managed system) pushing so many clickbait news story notifications. A company is paying for Windows and yet Microsoft is actively trying to distract that company's workers, all for a few fractions of a penny click through revenue.

A lot of engineering design is about trade-offs, and hang gliders are no exception. Sometimes though, it is possible to do things differently and better. We're really pleased to announce the Dynamic Cross Link (DXL) concept, the Puma is set to be the first glider to benefit, but more will follow. There's a full video which will Premiere on YouTube tomorrow morning (Saturday 7th, 10am UK time), please tune in for that, for the moment, there's a quick trailer on there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGanSCcUdk4

@matthewcroughan@social.defenestrate.it @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk I don't know, I haven't seriously looked at it (as I say, I'm happy with Quickfile and I don't have the time to change systems without a really good reason), but it appears from a cursory inspection that ERP GAP (I don't know who they are) are offering the connector that they say connects Odoo (including "Community edition", so presumably self hosted) to MTD. 5 minutes web searching will put you ahead of me on this! If you do go this route I'll be interested how it works.

@matthewcroughan@social.defenestrate.it @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk it came in a few (5 or 6?) years ago for VAT registered businesses, why I switched to Quickfile. I've been happy with Quickfile, yes it's SaaS, but it's given me good service at a fair price. Someone recently pointed me to this: https://www.odoo.com/ Open Source enterprise software. Looks like it does have an MTD connector. Full blown enterprise software, so a bit overkill for Avian and even more so for a sole trader, but interesting, didn't exist when I chose Quickfile

@cccpresser@chaos.social you don't need to build it yourself! Just go to https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases
and you can download pre built executables for Linux, Mac or Windows. There's the v1.1 Release Candidate there and also even more cutting edge weekly builds.

Continuing my series of posts on the development work we've been doing so far, this one is about the frame and how it works to give good handling:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/149280801

A big thank you to everyone that's sponsoring my development efforts through Patreon (www.patreon.com/hgdev). We're making progress, so I'm writing up a summary of what we've achieved so far, the first section is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/hows-it-going-1-147742037

Odd message on my parents computer, Firefox popped up with a warning that it was running low on disk space and to clear stored data to free up space. The computer in question has a 500GB drive which is about 1/2 full, but Firefox thinks that it had somehow got 17 million TB stored somewhere. My parents seem to have somehow downloaded the whole internet! They cleared it and the error hasn't come back.

@xkcd@mastodon.xyz I've never understood why the sun needed sunglasses. As the source of radiance, them surely the sun is only entity in the solar system which will never be looking at the sun? Unless it's looking in a mirror, then it would definitely need some cool shades 😎