21–30 of 73 posts
The usability differences are insane. What took me hours in freecad takes minutes in fusion 360. Fusion 360 just does what you expect, while freecad throws nonsensical errors and randomly breaks your whole model if you edit something you've already done and it takes hours to fix.
It's definitely got rough spots, especially the tendency for models to sometimes become corrupt and flip inside out. But overall I like it, and I can make do with the problems.
FreeCAD 0.19 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26533384 - March 2021 (60 comments)
FreeCAD Simulator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25098981 - Nov 2020 (13 comments)
FreeCAD BIM development news - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951311 - Oct 2020 (23 comments)
FreeCAD: A free and open source multiplatform 3D parametric modeler - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24513340 - Sept 2020 (268 comments)
FreeCAD on Raspberry Pi 4 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22347385 - Feb 2020 (36 comments)
FreeCAD BIM development news December 2018 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800484 - Jan 2019 (22 comments)
FreeCAD 0.17 “Roland” released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16790814 - April 2018 (58 comments)
FreeCAD Arch development news - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480294 - June 2017 (44 comments)
FreeCAD 0.16 release notes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11533435 - April 2016 (75 comments)
Free CAD-CAM Software Demos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9893631 - July 2015 (1 comment)
I have pretty mixed feelings about FreeCAD, having used it for 100+ hours across a few different projects. It’s wonderful to have a open-source alternative to the expensive CAD software that muscled its way into a near monopoly in academia/industry, but it suffers from some really inexcusable design problems, on a fundamental level. As it is, I don’t think it’s really usable as a serious tool for creating complex ass…
> some really inexcusable design problems, on a fundamental level Can you be more specific? I understand that the Topological Naming Problem is big (discussed in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSsVFu929jo ), but as I understand it this is being fixed in the RealThunder branch ( https://bit.ly/3iBzQly ), and fixes may be flowing from this into FreeCAD 0.2.
Recent fun example I've encountered: doing a fillet in two places at the same time can result in either an unhelpful "resulting shape is invalid" or a crash inside OpenCASCADE, depending on the selection order (!) — https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD/issues/202
I can't wait to see FreeCAD or something like it mature into something on the level of Blender. The problem seems to be that other free-ish CAD software exists out there, so there's not much demand. Another problem seems to be that overlap between people interested in solid modeling and people able to program for solid modeling is very small. For sculpting, Blender actually does pretty well. And for parametric solid…
> For programmatic non-parametric modeling, there's OpenSCAD. There is also CadQuery, which claims to have fundamental technical advantages over OpenSCAD: https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery I've tried CadQuery and had a rough time of it. I haven't used OpenSCAD at all though, so I can't compare.
CadQuery should be better, but they refuse to just release a standalone pip library, instead everything is distributed through anaconda which just breaks my existing library setup. Technically you can use miniconda I guess, but in reality if I'm going through that much trouble to set up software, it's probably just best to move on.
I found FreeCad easier to install and use frankly -- especially the RealThunder AppImage version.
Use the Realthunder version of freecad in an AppImage container. It seems to be more stable.
I have pretty mixed feelings about FreeCAD, having used it for 100+ hours across a few different projects. It’s wonderful to have a open-source alternative to the expensive CAD software that muscled its way into a near monopoly in academia/industry, but it suffers from some really inexcusable design problems, on a fundamental level. As it is, I don’t think it’s really usable as a serious tool for creating complex ass…
Curious if you have compared to SolveSpace?
For example things being split into X workspace that you have to constantly switch between (each with their own toolbar layout) is not a good workflow.
For simple stuff I think it's pretty good. Though it falls apart when you have topological changes in the tree. For more complex stuff I'm tempted to go buy Alibre Cad. It's $150 for personal use / no subscription. https://www.alibre.com/atom3d/