Weeelll … it’s a 70 year old field if you start counting from NC. It’s also possible most of the low hanging innovation fruits were picked long ago. Also innovation required decades of _really hard work_ in applied maths (see nurbs or catmull-clarke surfaces*).
I’m not saying there isn’t room for innovation!
But we also have the examples of several other types of applications clearly reaching maximum utility. Photo editing around Photoshop 6.0 or so, word processing like decades ago, spreadsheet like decades ago.
Sometimes things _do_ seem to have their optimum form.
I’m not saying FOSS CAD would not have a value! But it’s not obvious to me it would be a vehicle for innovation.
I guess better, more easier to edit and robust surface presentation would be valuable if someone came up with them. But that’s a field that requires generally decades of applied research to first find a better model and then a decade of productizing the innovation.
So since you need to keep industrial mathematicians on board without certain outcomes it’s a bit same as medical research - need continuous investment, careers, etc. For this reason it’s not obvious to me there would be an open source framework that would work here predictably.
Again, I’m not saying you are wrong. Maybe there are simple low hanging fruit just waiting to be picked. But I’m not sure you are exactly right either.
* Catmull-Clarke surfaces are a great example. Ed Catmull founded Pixar decades after inventing the surface, but it took a decade of industrial research inside Pixar before they became a usefull tool (Geri’s Game). Toy story was still NURBs, somewhat ironically.
Weeelll … it’s a 70 year old field if you start counting from NC. It’s also possible most of the low hanging innovation fruits were picked long ago. Also innovation required decades of _really hard work_ in applied maths (see nurbs or catmull-clarke surfaces*).
I’m not saying there isn’t room for innovation!
But we also have the examples of several other types of applications clearly reaching maximum utility. Photo editing around Photoshop 6.0 or so, word processing like decades ago, spreadsheet like decades ago.
Sometimes things _do_ seem to have their optimum form.
I’m not saying FOSS CAD would not have a value! But it’s not obvious to me it would be a vehicle for innovation.
I guess better, more easier to edit and robust surface presentation would be valuable if someone came up with them. But that’s a field that requires generally decades of applied research to first find a better model and then a decade of productizing the innovation.
So since you need to keep industrial mathematicians on board without certain outcomes it’s a bit same as medical research - need continuous investment, careers, etc. For this reason it’s not obvious to me there would be an open source framework that would work here predictably.
Again, I’m not saying you are wrong. Maybe there are simple low hanging fruit just waiting to be picked. But I’m not sure you are exactly right either.
* Catmull-Clarke surfaces are a great example. Ed Catmull founded Pixar decades after inventing the surface, but it took a decade of industrial research inside Pixar before they became a usefull tool (Geri’s Game). Toy story was still NURBs, somewhat ironically.