If computer graphics is of interest, BRL-CAD (https://brlcad.org) is very welcoming to new contributors and has lots of projects you could take on. Source: about 1 year ago

Mike Muuss[0] approves of this message. 0: https://brlcad.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago

Join an open source community that is welcoming to newcomers (e.g., BRL-CAD, Haiku OS, OSGeo, ..) and work on a little bit of code every day. It can be a simple feature, specific bug, or something new you want to achieve. Many open source groups are very welcoming to newcomers if you do the work and ask smart questions. Source: over 1 year ago

You could also try out free AutoCAD alternatives like libreCAD (2D), or brlCAD (2D&3D, I believe). Source: over 1 year ago

So, uh ... Learning curve. If you want anything and everything under the sun, go with BRL-CAD. It was designed for ballistics testing and simulation, but it can do pretty much anything. The learning curve for BRL-CAD is immense. Otherwise, I recommend OpenSCAD. Source: over 1 year ago

So I made a mini plotter based on this tutorial, and while the g-codes the site uses as examples are working fine, when I try to upload my own g-codes, they fail. More specifically, they either try to make an image way bigger than the range of the machine, and they aren't lowering the pen correctly. I've been using jscut.org to convert svg files to gcode, and I think it's probably because the site is suboptimal... Source: over 2 years ago