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FreeCAD

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Re: FreeCAD

#71

Post by luke5441 »

goku12 wrote: post #31
kantord wrote: post #10

I 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 releas…

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.

Re: FreeCAD

#72

Post by magneticmonkey »

ghayes wrote: post #25

I’ve really enjoyed Shapr3D (built on Parasolid). Nothing particularly better than the usual competitors but the interface is really intuitive and you can realistically develop on an iPad. Curious if anyone else has had experiences with it.

I like it to. I am just not happy with how they handle model history. And it is missing many of the tooling I like from things like Fusion. A thread tool would go a long way for hobbyists.

Re: FreeCAD

#73

Post by jcgrillo »

tda wrote: post #48

I recently gave CadQuery (a Python wrapper around OpenCASCADE) and its Jupyter and VSCode integrations another try. Two years ago installation was a mess across conda, Docker, and pyenv, and the API itself felt like a dense, bespoke DSL you had to fight. This time everything just installed, and Claude Code turned out to be pretty good. Designing with code is sometimes more work upfront, but iteration is so much bette…

I believe there's a cadquery workbench for freecad, I messed around with it about a year ago but ran into similar struggles as you describe. I'll have to give it another try.

Re: FreeCAD

#74

Post by willis936 »

bsza wrote: post #67
willis936 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with openSCAD is that you cannot modify it easily. I had made a complex geometry several years ago in openSCAD and I have been waiting for a model that can actually convert it into a python script that generates freecad parametric sketches that recreate it in an editable way. All frontier models fail at this, some more spectacularly than others (gemini never spent 40 minutes / $4 trying and failing, but o…

Your ball looks well parametrized to me, what kind of editing are you missing from it? Unless you want to change the shape of the locking mechanism altogether, which I think would be a chore in any format.

Yeah the lock is what needs iterating. It was always marginal and took several rounds of prototyping to even get to a printable state. I'd like to experiment with something like a keyed screw.

The issue with this scad file is that I built the geometry up with no functions. I tried and failed to get them working so I just pushed through, so now it is mind melting to try to refactor it. I'm hoping to one day melt a mechanical mind to get it done. Until then, it's a fun challenge prompt for these models.

Re: FreeCAD

#76

Post by rounce »

WillAdams wrote: post #64

I've crashed and burned in FreeCAD each time I've tried it (to be fair, that's happened in every other traditional 3D CAD program I've tried except Dune 3D) --- hoping that someone will update: https://magazine.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad for the new UI --- any word on that? (Just an annotated copy would be great) Apparently, one of the devs from Ondsel has done a soft-fork and is stumping for funding: https://www.…

> for the new UI --- any word on that? (Just an annotated copy would be great)

I also am not a fan of the icon-only toolbars and so I always use this plugin: https://github.com/APEbbers/FreeCAD-Ribbon

IMO it's a big improvement (I have it configured to only show small sized icons with labels) but then again I know not everyone is a fan of this type of toolbar because of the amount of screen space it takes up.

Re: FreeCAD

#77

Post by yehoshuapw »

jcgrillo wrote: post #73
tda wrote: post #48

I recently gave CadQuery (a Python wrapper around OpenCASCADE) and its Jupyter and VSCode integrations another try. Two years ago installation was a mess across conda, Docker, and pyenv, and the API itself felt like a dense, bespoke DSL you had to fight. This time everything just installed, and Claude Code turned out to be pretty good. Designing with code is sometimes more work upfront, but iteration is so much bette…

I believe there's a cadquery workbench for freecad, I messed around with it about a year ago but ran into similar struggles as you describe. I'll have to give it another try.

not really. cadquery started as a freecad workbench, but moved out a long while ago. So current cadquery isn't usable inside freecad (which is a shame).

also worth a look: build123d

Re: FreeCAD

#78

Post by rounce »

VorpalWay wrote: post #28
lich_king wrote: post #21

I really want to support open-source CAD, but it's so hard to take FreeCAD seriously. It reminds me of POV-Ray, which was (and still is) a parametric raytracer. An impressive feat of engineering completely derailed by the choice of a "UI" paradigm that made the simplest things unreasonably hard. Designing 3D parts is hard enough, and while parametric modeling has uses... come on.

Parametric modelling is not the cause of the bad UI in FreeCAD, Fusion 360, Onshape, etc are also parametric. No, the main problems (last I tried it around 1.0) were that it had a clunky UI and that it was buggy. It would refuse to chamfer or bevel edges for no apparent reason that other CAD software wouldn't have issues with. There were occasionally crashes. Editing previous steps would destroy the later steps much…

> It would refuse to chamfer or bevel edges for no apparent reason that other CAD software wouldn't have issues with.

I'm guessing you're trying to set a fillet which would completely consume one of the faces adjacent to the edge being filleted. In these cases I've found that a workaround is to make the fillet 0.001mm smaller than the size which would consume the entire face. You end up with a very very small amount of flat area but it's so small it doesn't show up during machining or 3d printing.

Re: FreeCAD

#79

Post by VorpalWay »

rounce wrote: post #78
VorpalWay wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parametric modelling is not the cause of the bad UI in FreeCAD, Fusion 360, Onshape, etc are also parametric. No, the main problems (last I tried it around 1.0) were that it had a clunky UI and that it was buggy. It would refuse to chamfer or bevel edges for no apparent reason that other CAD software wouldn't have issues with. There were occasionally crashes. Editing previous steps would destroy the later steps much…

> It would refuse to chamfer or bevel edges for no apparent reason that other CAD software wouldn't have issues with. I'm guessing you're trying to set a fillet which would completely consume one of the faces adjacent to the edge being filleted. In these cases I've found that a workaround is to make the fillet 0.001mm smaller than the size which would consume the entire face. You end up with a very very small amount…

Usually the issue seemed to be with compound curves or where a filet tapers out as it meets up with a face going in another direction (such as a handle that sticks out).

Re: FreeCAD

#80

Post by jcgrillo »

yehoshuapw wrote: post #77
jcgrillo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there's a cadquery workbench for freecad, I messed around with it about a year ago but ran into similar struggles as you describe. I'll have to give it another try.

not really. cadquery started as a freecad workbench, but moved out a long while ago. So current cadquery isn't usable inside freecad (which is a shame). also worth a look: build123d

I just learned about build123d from another comment here, very excited to try it out!
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