61–70 of 111 posts
I've designed some basic parts in Tinkercad and openscad but have never really been able to grok Freecad or Fusion. Is there a good resource for making that leap? Just the explosion of menu bar options is a lot
Recently one of the magnet holders for my window shutters broke, and I thought I'd take a crack at designing a replacement to 3D Print. I'd never designed anything in CAD software before, so I had no real reference. I found FreeCAD extremely easy to use and intuitive. I watched a couple videos and followed-along with the tutorials, then started on my own item. It's a relatively simple 3-part component. I took measure…
This is best done on some kind of grid background but having a ruler (or two) is usually enough.
One suggestion, print one or two layers first to check the fit. Iterate with that before you print the whole thing.
Another helpful thing is to start drawing things parametrically. This should be familiar to programmers. You're using variables and you want to design things primarily through relationships. This becomes a huge unlock because scaling your parts becomes much easier
FreeCAD is really the only serious contender for CAD on Linux. I love how everything is hackable via Python APIs. Every release seems to fix more and more UX issues. I have very high hopes for it to eventually start attracting more commercial usage, much like KiCad and Blender did in their spaces. We need more open software like that.
Is it any closer to functioning like Solidworks, NX, Creo, and all the other professional CAD software packages? Edit: After opening it up it seems better than before but still not a replacement. I can use the draw tool to create a rectangle but than immediately cannot apply symmetry or equal length constraints until I delete others which shouldn't overlap. Clicking to create a cut or hole opens up a window that does…
It seems like the development team has gotten much more organized in the last couple years, so I have a lot of hope for the future. I think that good open source parametric CAD is something the world really needs.
Slightly unrelated to this story, but I’m curious if anyone has good resources for learning FreeCAD. I have quite a lot of experience with SolidWorks, AutoCAD, OnShape, and similar software, but FreeCAD has always been hard for me to pick up.
TL;DR: I wish they'd just align with Blender on UX, TBH. I wish they settled on a nicer UX with less visual clutter. I use Blender and it is a _massively_ more complex application in every regard, yet its right-aligned panel and progressive exposure of toolbars feels infinitely more polished than FreeCad's clunky panel (which is often rendered with huge, oversized fields and buttons) and their legendary five-stacked…
Recently one of the magnet holders for my window shutters broke, and I thought I'd take a crack at designing a replacement to 3D Print. I'd never designed anything in CAD software before, so I had no real reference. I found FreeCAD extremely easy to use and intuitive. I watched a couple videos and followed-along with the tutorials, then started on my own item. It's a relatively simple 3-part component. I took measure…
for incredibly simple parts that i can describe using measurements, i've had a lot of fun pointing a high-power ai at openscad and letting it iterate through making the design for me it's still tough to turn it into something i can then keep fiddling with in freecad though put on "tron: ares" in the background to fully appreciate the model designing something that will be 3d-printed :)
In coming time you can see freecad massively improving. This space lacks good opensource solution. I have tried creating my parts, tried tinkercad (which is simple but limited) Tried fusion. And pretty much other things don't support mac. I've a hunch lots of vibe coders are going to come and launch stuff like freecad and Gimp (which I never liked, can't even get simple tasks done in gimp) Future is bright for openso…
Linkedin sentence structure + baseless LLM promotion. There is no evidence here the latest update was vibe coded. It's fairly offensive to devalue the work that the FreeCAD developers put in like this.
Recently one of the magnet holders for my window shutters broke, and I thought I'd take a crack at designing a replacement to 3D Print. I'd never designed anything in CAD software before, so I had no real reference. I found FreeCAD extremely easy to use and intuitive. I watched a couple videos and followed-along with the tutorials, then started on my own item. It's a relatively simple 3-part component. I took measure…
for incredibly simple parts that i can describe using measurements, i've had a lot of fun pointing a high-power ai at openscad and letting it iterate through making the design for me it's still tough to turn it into something i can then keep fiddling with in freecad though put on "tron: ares" in the background to fully appreciate the model designing something that will be 3d-printed :)
https://wiki.freecad.org/Python_scripting_tutorial
Edit: Your website is quite confusing. Took me awhile...