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Re: FreeCAD

#121

Post by qiine »

phkahler wrote: post #117
qiine wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda wish blender could just do CAD honestly, It feels like all those 3D modeling apps like 3DSmax,Fusion even Zbrush share like 90% of their feature set but your are forced to literally juggle(for videogame dev at least) because of one or two arguably extremely niche capability.

>> I kinda wish blender could just do CAD honestly Have you tried the "CAD sketcher" add-on? I think Blender should have similar functionality built-in, but for now this looks like a nice add-on. Blender is a very very long way from being used as a general purpose CAD tool, and IMHO it should not strive to be that. But having this ability to do simple CAD designs without opening and learning a different program is co…

That's my opinion but I think that game/cinema/whatever 3D modeling should lean more and more toward CAD like workflow.

If we want to bring those medium to the next level.

Re: FreeCAD

#122

Post by rounce »

erremerre wrote: post #26
beachy wrote: post #6

I 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…

I never understood this UI problem. Because... You can copy the UI of the leader and problem solved. There you have GIMP with an absolute nightmare UI to use, but people keep saying, just get used to it. On the other hand, a single developer, in javascript, made a copy of photoshop, and most people I know prefer to use that over GIMP... Just copy the UI that works, if you can't research your own UI.

> There you have GIMP with an absolute nightmare UI to use, but people keep saying, just get used to it.

Which is something I find odd that so many people seem to assume GIMP as the de-facto open source photoshop alternative when Krita is more analogous and much easier to use.

Re: FreeCAD

#123

Post by kantord »

luke5441 wrote: post #71
goku12 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution for Topological Naming Problem (TNP) was merged just before the 1.0 release. A lot of other significant changes were also merged in at the same time. Some people have reported that the UX has improved a lot since then. I don't know much about the internal architecture of FreeCAD. As far as I know, FreeCAD does a lot of heavy lifting including managing TNP. It's supposed to be handled by the CAD kernel -…

Not a solution, but could be one of the problems we should tell the "LLMs will replace software engineers" crowd to implement. Maybe then they'll notice that without Open Source training data it won't be able to solve the problem.

It's possible that the training data (and research data) is already out there, just not (yet) combined into a single open source CAD kernel.

Then again, the success of such a project might depend on other factors. Given the complexity of the task, I can imagine that just "lucking into" the right design decisions early on could have a major impact.

Re: FreeCAD

#124

Post by rounce »

imtringued wrote: post #35
erremerre wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood this UI problem. Because... You can copy the UI of the leader and problem solved. There you have GIMP with an absolute nightmare UI to use, but people keep saying, just get used to it. On the other hand, a single developer, in javascript, made a copy of photoshop, and most people I know prefer to use that over GIMP... Just copy the UI that works, if you can't research your own UI.

>Because... You can copy the UI of the leader and problem solved. For whatever reason, the FreeCAD community is explicitly against taking note from competitors. Copying the UI of the leader is a thoughtcrime.

No it isn’t, stop being silly.

Re: FreeCAD

#125

Post by sho_hn »

MegaDeKay wrote: post #118
sho_hn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows a general problem that FreeCAD still has: Inside an initially off-putting and frustrating UI experience is a really good application trying to get out, but at the moment a new user still has to dig it out themselves. For example, problems like this one. Or the confusing 3D navigation (switch to Gesture or TinkerCAD mode in the Settings), or the non-interactive view cube. And many other gotchas and paper cu…

> The authors get somewhat blinded to the pain because they're used to it, plus change is difficult for the established userbase. There's also a feeling that emulating competitors is surrendering one's own identity, and the idea that some of the rough edges are justified by "the powerfulness". Thus radically changing defaults, streamlining, simplifying and even just matching user expectations is often perceived as "t…

> I think it is unfair to say that they are "blinded to the pain".

I mean it more in the sense that it's very difficult to truly conceive of what a new user of the app would stumble over or dislike, if you're very used to it yourself.

Often that means small things that would not be that hard to address become invisible, because there's obvious higher priorities. Other times, things are considered small fries that actually are consistently wrong and need a holistic re-think.

One of the best things to do is to actually watch novice users use your software. This was also a big boost to the "Blender moment", when the Blender studio started inviting over artist and just watched them work in the software. This used to be really hard to do, but has now become a bit easier with screencasting and conferencing tools. I bet FreeCAD is also starting to do more of this.

Thanks for adding additional info! I forgot to mention the Design Working Group as another sign. In KDE we also set up a similar "Visual Design Group" years ago that was behind a lot of the improvements.

Re: FreeCAD

#126

Post by tmaly »

fainpul wrote: post #49
dracotomes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from Fusion to FreeCAD when I bid Windows goodbye (this video inspired me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEfNRST_3x8 ). Fusion does a LOT of stuff for you that FreeCAD doesn't - i.e. extrude a pad from two intersecting shapes in a sketch. While this is annoying at first I feel it forces me to design smarter. I've had a few crashes and the constraint solver sometimes seems to behave weird and takes a ctrl+…

> extrude a pad from two intersecting shapes in a sketch You can do that in FreeCAD 1.1. Select the sketch, enable "Make Internals" in the data tab. You can also enable it permanently in settings.

It would be interesting if FreeCAD could iterate towards something that is also easy for agents to use. I have seen cases of people doing this with Blender.

Re: FreeCAD

#127

Post by silon42 »

IshKebab wrote: post #38
sakras wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried SolveSpace? It's easily my favorite open source CAD program. The main things it's missing are shells, fillets, and chamfers. But I've been able to 3D print quite a few parts using it!

Solvespace is nice, but missing fillets and chamfers is kind of a deal-breaker. Last time I tried it it also had issues with small holes turning into diamonds. That said, pre-1.0 FreeCAD had a terrible UX so it was the best FOSS CAD option. With the 1.0 release of FreeCAD the UX is much better though. There are still a few WTFs (e.g. it took me quite a while to figure out rollback is done via right-click->set tip, or…

Yeah, I use FreeCAD when I need fillets/chamfers... before that, I usually model my 3d printer stuff using OpenSCAD.

Re: FreeCAD

#128

Post by WarmWash »

FreeCAD is the first program I ever used where I actually drafted hate mail to the devs (but the oss nature gave me restraint in actually pressing send)

I spent 2 days crash coursing freeCAD (this is with a general understanding of the theory of 3D design already) to try and make an adapter plate for my car. A plate with 6 holes in precise spots and tapped. It was absolutely brutal and after the first 3D print trial had the a couple holes misaligned, I trashed freecad got the free fusion360.

No shit, in 20 minutes I had made the exact part I needed. The program actually worked the way you would expect. I didn't even need a tutorial it was so intuitive. Even if I hadn't spent the previous 2 days getting bent by freecad, I'm pretty sure it would have taken me only an hour max with a blank slate mind in fusion.

Now I'm getting angry writing this. If the FreeCAD guys see this, thanks for the hard work, but understand your minds must work completely differently than even the average engineers.

Re: FreeCAD

#129

Post by sho_hn »

fainpul wrote: post #115
freeopinion wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please be careful about voicing generic complaints in a discussion of a specific product. IMO, FreeCAD 1.0 took some huge leaps in ergonomics. I was surprised about how much work had been done. The workers behind FreeCAD don't deserve lazy sniping that doesn't even apply to their creation. My guess is that they might appreciate specific criticism. It would probably help focus the work they are doing. But don't genera…

But I mean it. In my opinion, all the criticism of my post also applies to FreeCAD, not just other projects. Look what brought this up: a hidden feature someone wanted but wasn't aware of. I'm not trying to blame anyone. I think this is a structural problem with FOSS projects in general (and it also applies to FreeCAD specifically).

I think freeopinion is right, though. I don't think "Make internals" is off by default only because the developers are conservative, but because the meaning and behavior of it changed a few times recently around the merger of the RealThunder forks and the TNP work. I did a casual search and 2025 comments are full of it doing nothing.

So a more productive specific thing would perhaps be indeed to strike up a "It seems to work nicely now, why isn't it default?" convo and maybe figure out the remaining bugs.

Re: FreeCAD

#130

Post by martinpw »

tda wrote: post #50
beachy wrote: post #6

I 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…

The real problem is that BREP CAD kernels are hard. A few of proprietary kernels dominate the scene: Parasolid powers NX, SolidWorks, Fusion, and Onshape, while ACIS (owned by Dassault) is used by Inventor and BricsCAD. Catia uses Dassault's own CGM kernel. The open-source world relies mostly on OpenCASCADE, which is unfortunately a lot less capable than any of these. Fillets and chamfers are a good example. They see…

> Fillets and chamfers are a good example. They seem simple but are geometrically non-trivial, and OCC will fail on cases that Parasolid handles without complaint.

A long time ago I interviewed at one of the large CAD companies. I remember getting an office tour and the person showing me around pointed into a corner with six desks and said "that is the team that does fillets".

Open source tools can handle some cases, but to handle the full complexity of real world problems is a huge extra step that I doubt they will manage any time soon.

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