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FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

freecadweb.org

41–50 of 73 posts

Re: FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

#41
I've no experience with any other CAD tool, and, over the past 5 years, I've tried 4 times to learn FreeCAD. 3 times, I eventually gave up: the learning curve is very steep.

Now on my 4th try, it's finally starting to stick a little bit. One of the reasons is that Fusion 360 decided to reduce the functionality of their free version. Because of that many people flocked to FreeCAD and there has been an explosion of Youtube tutorials. They require a lot of time, but they do help.

Still, there are a lot of infuriating UI issues. In the Draft workbench, you have a set of amazing option to select just the right item of your design (the middle of a line, or the closest endpoint, or a point perpendicular etc) but in other workbenches, none of that exists, and you need to move your mouse with pixel precision to select a vertex instead of a line connected to it. Sometimes things also just don't work, and you need to try a bunch of workarounds to get what you want.

In the end, I settled on the following solution: I use it the way others use OpenSCad, where I construct my design in Python. Even that has its own issues (documentation is decent but not great), but at least, I can do things with pure math instead of a cranky UI.

I could, of course, just switch to OpenSCad instead, but one of then I'm fully committed to using only scripting, with no ways to do final postprocessing steps with a GUI.

For all its flaws, FreeCAD is the best you can get in open source form, and some people can do amazing things with it. Some of my issues are almost certainly due to never having used a CAD tool at all.

Once my first complex design is complete, I do want to try one of the commercial tools. Most people migrate from commerical to FreeCAD, not very many do the opposite. I'm intrigued by what it will be like.

Re: FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

#42
post #13

i've used FreeCAD but didn't like the UI so then I switched to OnShape. I used OnShape for a while but then switched over to Fusion360 because the vast majority of the people in my hobby ( amateur rocketry ) use Fusion360. Using the same tool as everyone else really helps when asking questions and reading tips/tricks.

Yeah. A major "cost" of CAD software is the investment in learning it, which is made much cheaper by having others learn it whom you can interact with, an open community to ask questions of, etc. That's part of why it hurt so much when Autodesk crippled the hobbyist version of Fusion 360. All the stuff it can't do now no one can help you learn.

I didn't use Fusion 360 back when the hobbyist version was great. I actually pay $500/yr for Fusion 360 (it's one of the only pieces of software I use that costs money out of my pocket) and to me it's worth every cent. It's a phenomenally powerful program.

Now what I don't like is that advanced features are extra (on top of a single seat license); like, certain toolpaths cost extra money. But so far, the amount of features in the single seat license version has been good to me.

Re: FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

#43
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious if you have compared to SolveSpace?

Last time I used SolveSpace, what I hated the most was how the undo button was near useless.. and https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/91 is still open :/

Undo/redo works great and now has a 100 step history.

Re: FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

#44
post #14

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…

Note that almost by definition a programmatic interface to cad makes it parametric. The parameters are now in the program.

The other (crucially) important part is that a change to a parameter only needs to cause recalculation of effected objects. With openscad, you have to re-run the entire program.

Re: FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found OpenSCAD to be very friendly for parametric designs, but after a while I switched to the SolidPython wrapper as it was more flexible. However, I'm hunting for a better way to create 3d models via code (Blender Python?) because 'extrude_along_path'->SolidPython->OpenSCAD->stl export simply could not handle my model.

CadQuery should be better as it is using the OpenCASCADE cad kernel (same as FreeCAD) instead of a simplistic ad-hoc thingy.

I honestly think CadQuery has more promise as a way to get open source 3D components and modules to the mainstream, because it's fundamentally code, and can be reasoned about as such (diffed, merged, blamed, parameterised, modularised, reused and tested). Putting SolidWorks or FreeCad file into source control is a very different thing.

Also, as it's natively Python, you have all sorts of library support, up to and including things like numpy.

Re: FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

#46
post #8

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.

I currently design my FreeCAD models by writing them in Python. That way, I don't need to learn yet another base language, and I still get to use the FreeCAD GUI for manual refinement.

Re: FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

#48
post #14

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…

Note that almost by definition a programmatic interface to cad makes it parametric. The parameters are now in the program.

But it doesnt have a constraint solver, so you'll be doing some math here and there.

Re: FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

#49
post #23

I have very little experience with FreeCAD, but I used Solid Works years ago. I still can't understand why with FreeCAD the chamfering or "smoothing" the edges breaks the model. I thought chamfering should be easy task if it uses SDF's or something like it for solid modelling, but somehow it makes unwanted holes.

No commercial CAD uses SDFs. Fillets and chamfers are a had problem particularly where multiple edges meet.

Re: FreeCAD: Open-source 3D parametric modeler

#50

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…

I will give the latest version another go.

I last used it 3 years ago, and I agree, I found it difficult to use, and worse, it would frequently corrupt the model, or confuse the object hierarchy to the point I would have to start again.

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