FreeCAD
freecad.org
FreeCAD
1–10 of 197 posts
Re: FreeCAD
#2Few points that I've not seen being factored in over the past decade-
* This needs a better renderer in today's day & age
* Need cross-device/web support
* Topology Optimization w/ pure physics code
-----
Hopefully LLMs can work on forking this or adding better features with AI-assists
Re: FreeCAD
#3Spent hours and hours learning how to use it to draw a part. Got it done, but then didn't use it for a long time. Next time, couldn't remember how.
Finding Cadquery less of a hurdle for casual use. Wish I could run it from Termux though.
Re: FreeCAD
#4I'm a occasional hobbyist maker and i've used Autodesk Fusion, Solid Edge, OpenSCAD and other niche parametric programs, but always felt FreeCAD was too complex. But I really wanted it to work for me because it's FOSS and 100% offline. So with the new FreeCAD 1.1 RC I found an hour long tutorial and dove in.
(1.1 is supposedly much easier to work with)
After doing the tut I can say that 1.1 is very nice, i can uninstall Fusion and Solid Edge finally :)
The guide i followed, no relation to it whatsoverer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxxDahY1U6E
Re: FreeCAD
#5Spent hours and hours learning how to use it to draw a part. Got it done, but then didn't use it for a long time. Next time, couldn't remember how. Finding Cadquery less of a hurdle for casual use. Wish I could run it from Termux though.
I used it once or twice to open an existing .step file just to know if I was exporting it correctly from KiCad.
Speaking of KiCad, I am convincing lots of people to move from EAGLE to it now that EAGLE is about to be killed by AutoDesk, and everyone seem to be having a good time.
I am hoping FreeCAD can become good to the point I can convince people to move to it too.
Re: FreeCAD
#6I feel CAD is one area where open source does not shine. The problem space is too complex, and the UIs demand continuous, thoughtful development driven from customer demands rather than developers scratching their own itches.
Not least there are free (as in beer) solutions available, like fusion 360, that are enormously capable.
Theres certainly a place for open source, and openscad would be a great tool to reach for for procedurally generated models. But in all honesty, Freecad doesn't compare well to the professional tools in this space - not in the way that say, gimp does to its commercial competitors.
Re: FreeCAD
#7Spent hours and hours learning how to use it to draw a part. Got it done, but then didn't use it for a long time. Next time, couldn't remember how. Finding Cadquery less of a hurdle for casual use. Wish I could run it from Termux though.
Cadquery looks interesting. In particular STEP support compared to OpenSCAD. Thanks for mentioning.
Re: FreeCAD
#8I'm pretty happy with build123d these days https://github.com/gumyr/build123d
Re: FreeCAD
#9In a space that's being taken over by cloud shit where you have no privacy, FreeCAD is one of the last good CAD engineering tools left, let alone being FOSS.
Re: FreeCAD
#10I only used it for some hobby modeling, but I have to say it's fantastic and very impressive.
It seems like it's fully community-maintained, there is no big company or foundation behind it. Honestly it's hard to believe!
There was just one major problem, the infamous "topological naming problem" which caused issues downstream is you edited a non-leaf node. That was pretty frustrating to deal with, but in later releases they fixed it I think. (Have not tried it since because I didn't have anything to model)