Avian Hang Gliders

@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.

@koen_hufkens@mastodon.social @concretedog@mastodon.social yes, actually as correction I shouldn't say just academia increasingly filled with bean counters, the same also goes for government and also for most large businesses!

@concretedog@mastodon.social @koen_hufkens@mastodon.social also measurement fallacy. Academia increasingly filled with bean counters. Bean counters need beans to count.

@concretedog@mastodon.social one way to approach this might be to contact the "Value Added Resellers". One reason SolidWorks became so popular is the VAR network they built up.
https://www.solidworks.com/how-to-buy/find-solidworks-reseller/
Potentially these might see a good business in selling support and customisation for FreeCAD. Paying for engineering software is something that all engineering companies expect, but then they expect a level of service too. You or I aren't going to give them that, but these guys might.

@matthewcroughan@social.defenestrate.it @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk Something of a paradox here. If you found a religion that would make you a prophet making organisation....

@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

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

Used @FreeCAD@fosstodon.org to design the moulds for the winglet. So printing the patterns (Prusa XL) to make moulds from which eventually the carbon parts will be made from. There's a pair of winglets, each mould is in 2 halves (plus some small loose pieces), the pattern for each half is printed in two sections and the print takes nearly 2 days. So about 2 weeks of solid 3D printing time to do the full set.