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I loved the idea of FreeCAD but having no experience in CAD software at all I always struggled with fundamental basics that were not covered in the tutorials I watched. The huge amount of work benches (some of them 3rd party) did not help since most forum posts or tutorials were based on different or outdated versions.
Having a go with build123d now, trying to model stuff using python. At least the number of available API functions is manageable and everything else is just programming (which I already know).
I have tried freecad a number of times to replace solidworks as a critical piece of closed source software in hardware development toolchains. I have always struggled. Yesterday someone spent an hour with me at a makespace saying… “FreeCAD has a different way of doing this/try realthunder branch/use symmetry condition/delete all conditions that coincide” … it has been worth years of trying alone. When I started solidworks the reseller gave me a week of training - this is often why complex FOSS software gets a reputation for being clunky, because alone you will spend ages hunting a GUI button in a complex interface.
TLDR: Go outside, go to makespace or a FREECAD conference - meet other people who use open source software - its much easier to use/learn from others than alone.
I’ve tried it for a few hours, but basic stuff seems incredibly needlessly difficult. After thousands of hours in Solidworks it’s just too painful.
Haven’t checked on FreeCAD in a while. Gonna check it out.
Does it support 3D mice?
Awesome!!
In a past career, I was a mechanical design engineer; I’ve probably spent 10,000 hours of my life in SolidWorks. Not once did I feel like a 3d mouse would speed me up or otherwise solve my problems. I trialed a spacepilot for several months and just couldn’t be arsed after awhile. What do others get out of them?
For some people it simply does not help with the workflow. For me it is a significant upgrade as it allows me to never use the normal mouse to move around in 3D, and allows me to quickly move the view to where I want it to be. Without it, moving in 3D just feels clunky to me.
But as I said, it is a preference.
I don’t have as many hours in SolidWorks but for me, trying to navigate without a 3d mouse feels like riding a bike with square tires. I could manage to do it but why. At the end of the day though it’s a preference. Likewise I have to murder the x and y axis on it for things to click in my head, which is another preference. I suppose growing up as a gamer may have something to do with that. I don’t want to move/rotate the object, I want to move/rotate the camera…
I guess Ill give it another look. Onshapes licensing is not compatible with my 3d printing side-gig, and Fusion360, although it has a very fairly priced startup license, requires me to run a Windows VM
freecad is actually getting fucking good for the price
I kinda want to try it out just as a hobby, is it decent or should I look elsewhere?
Is it decent ? Yes
Should I look elsewhere? Also yes.
CAD is difficult to understand on a good day, and FreeCAD is a beginner unfriendly implementation of it.
I personally love it and it’s an excellent tool if you already know what you are doing. If you don’t, it’s a mess of screens and spaces with no rhyme or reason.
My two cents. Learn CAD first, Google Sketchup or Fusion 360 are good and beginner friendly with lots of tutorials. Then move to FreeCAD to learn the differences.
That said if you want to just try FreeCAD, this release is the best I’ve used from them.
Does it still have that weird problem where you’re not allowed to modify surfaces because of the way you created them? Last time I tried using it, I couldn’t create a mirror copy of a shape and then edit the mirror. I could only edit the source, which then applied the changes to all the parts.
I’m familiar with sketchup, I’ll give it a shot this weekend!
FreeCAD has long had open source disease in that it is very powerful and yet a pain in the ass to work with partially through crap UI design.
1.0 includes a lot of changes that address this. They’ve modernized a lot of it, added a lot of missing features, and brought a lot of things up to modern snuff.
There are things I like about FreeCAD better than Fusion360, for example FreeCAD has a spreadsheet built into it. Fusion360, last time I used it, had a kind of underbaked Parameters list that you couldn’t even sort, the ability to have a spreadsheet for your dimensions and such.
All Parametric CAD software is complicated to use, you need to wrap your head around designing with rules, but once you get that basically all of them unlock.
Apparently Ondsel recently announced they’re shutting down, partially due to this release. A lot of what Ondsel added to the FreeCAD experience is just merged into FreeCAD now. Sad to see it but at least all their work wasn’t for nothing.
Really sad to hear this, I just found out about Ondsel recently. Glad to hear FreeCAD is getting their merges, but I really would have liked to see Ondsel find a market all its own.
I had mixed feelings about the whole Ondsel thing. And, please correct me if I’m wrong.
Most of the significant features in 1.0, that supposedly came from Ondsel, are things that I’ve been using for perhaps 3 years now, with a fairly well known branch of FreeCAD called Linkstage3 by a user that goes by RealThunder.
I don’t know how much he was involved in Ondsel, or the merging of those features into FreeCAD, but it sure looked like a whole lot of great work wasn’t credited to mind boggling amount of work by one person.
I still use the Linkstage3 branch, because it has a lot more features still, than what was present in the 1.0 pre-release i tried some months ago. Maybe things have changed since then.
legends
Rip Ondsel, made great changes before it died.
most of them are merged in FC, and they will still continue contributing.
Ooh! Time to give it another look.
tbh… I like it more than OnShape, but I also just use it as a hobby for 3dprinting.
It’s still… Difficult if you’re used to commercial CAD suites, but it’s leagues better than it used to be
Last time i tried it was crashing a bit. I am excited to try again, it’s such a needed tool
Well, I’m definitely going to try it because some of those third party workbenches look pretty cool. And I like the idea of having CAD software on my new Linux PC. But I have access to NX from work, so it’s going to have some big shoes to fill. Looks like there are workbenches for editing meshes like from STL files, which is cool. My license at work doesn’t include that. Anyone know if it supports 3DConnexion devices?
Yeah, there’s a 3rd-party driver called Spacenav that works pretty well. I haven’t gotten the two side buttons on my mini wireless one though.
(I wouldn’t bother with the driver from 3DConnexion as it hasn’t been touched in 10 years old)
ETA: The settings for it in FreeCAD is at Tools>Customize>Spaceball Motion/Buttons
Seems like a lot of great changes
Glad to hear! I was using it already from time to time.
Great news
