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Re: FreeCAD

#81

Post by WillAdams »

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

Yeah, I found it much more interesting when it was in FreeCAD --- wish there was some nice, graphical alternative (something like Grasshopper).

Re: FreeCAD

#82

Post by fainpul »

sho_hn wrote: post #65
fainpul wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

Well said. It seems to me, many FOSS projects suffer from long time contributors which are extremely conservative and don't like any kind of change. Hence every new or improved feature becomes merely a setting (which barely anybody will discover) which is not enabled by default. The UX does only worsen this way because old cruft coexists with its replacement, settings grow fast, the combinatorial explosion of all feature combinations produces tons of bugs and new users will always be turned off by the first use experience.

To make the necessary overhaul, someone with the "power to decide" is needed, which is somewhat incompatible with unpaid open source development. I think this video about Audacity's redesign is informative in this regard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38

Re: FreeCAD

#83

Post by WillAdams »

dsrtslnd23 wrote: post #7
kitesay wrote: post #3

Spent 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.

PythonSCAD recently gained STEP export:

https://pythonscad.org/

Re: FreeCAD

#84

Post by jcgrillo »

rabf wrote: post #54
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.

I use GIMP and FreeCAD quite often and find them very powerful programs, but maybe I'm some sort of genius? I think where these programs don't do well is among the crowd who expect to be able to just click around an advanced piece of software and somehow it just works to get things done! For basic apps this is a reasonable expectation, but CAD is not a simple process. PS: I've still not managed to learn Blender, not…

Part of what made Blender accessible around 2001-2002 when I was using it regularly was a really great paperback book[1] that served as a tutorial and reference. The UX was strange to be sure but after reading through the ~200 pages and getting acclimatized, it all began to feel sensible. If not for that book I would have bounced off Blender and never looked back.

[1] https://www.abebooks.com/Blender-Book-Carsten-Wartmann-Starc...

Re: FreeCAD

#85

Post by qiine »

elaus wrote: post #14
kuratkull wrote: post #4

I'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 uninst…

I too feel like the latest versions are quite a big improvement and I finally lost that feeling of slowing myself down just for the sake of using OSS. But I still hope for a "blender moment" where a concerted effort gets rid of old cruft, improves UI/UX and jump-starts growth (also in developers/funding) and further improvements.

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.

Re: FreeCAD

#86

Post by skydhash »

fainpul wrote: post #82
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…

Well said. It seems to me, many FOSS projects suffer from long time contributors which are extremely conservative and don't like any kind of change. Hence every new or improved feature becomes merely a setting (which barely anybody will discover) which is not enabled by default. The UX does only worsen this way because old cruft coexists with its replacement, settings grow fast, the combinatorial explosion of all fea…

> To make the necessary overhaul, someone with the "power to decide" is needed,

FOSS is a doer-cracy. If you have a pain point, patch it, and it will go away.

Re: FreeCAD

#87

Post by randusername »

mft_ wrote: post #40

(I’ve posted this before on HN but it’s worth repeating) I’m an CAD hobbyist, and I’ve tried to work with FreeCAD multiple times over past years, always failing…. …until I saw this video and learned about version 1.1: https://youtu.be/VEfNRST_3x8 FreeCAD is now in the same ballpark of capability and usability as Solidworks. It can still be a bit clunky and frustrating sometimes, but then so can most CAD programs, in…

Awesome, thanks for repeating.

I have, like, an old married couple relationship with SolidWorks. Stockholm syndrome may be more accurate. It shaped how I think, it aggravates me as only a long-time companion could, but overall I'm fond of it.

It gives me hope that others have made the switch. I've wanted to love FreeCAD for a long time, too.

Re: FreeCAD

#88

Post by JKCalhoun »

kuratkull wrote: post #4

I'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 uninst…

Yeah, I avoided Fusion (etc.) because of the usual bait-and-switch I've seen with commercial applications that claim to be "free" at some point. If I'm going to invest in learning a new application, I'd rather it be an open one.

I dove into FreeCAD with either version 1.0.0 or earlier. It was… rough.

To be sure, it was a whole new app so I expect initial navigation around the app to be challenging. But, wow.

Nonetheless, I did get a few things modeled up [1]. And for that I have to thank LLMs for steering me through using the app. I suggest others to try an LLM as a guide if you are learning (and I still am learning, of course). I like tutorials, but so often you can spend hours watching tutorials that cover all manner of ground where you simply want to complete a specific task—unable to find the tutorial covering how to do it.

Having said that though, I am eager to try this 1.0.2 version. (I'm also eager to fix a few minor MacOS-specific nits that I've already seen.)

[1] https://engineersneedart.com/blog/3dprinting2025/3dprinting2...

Re: FreeCAD

#89

Post by randusername »

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…

Do you think this is why CAD software UI/UX is often so clunky? The kernels are complicated and error-prone given the incalculable number of edge-cases, which puts error reporting at a disadvantage, leads to counter-intuitive feature wizards with some having way too many parameters and others being very single-purpose?

Re: FreeCAD

#90

Post by JKCalhoun »

sakras wrote: post #12
kuratkull wrote: post #4

I'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 uninst…

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!

Just checked it out [1] but it appears the last version released was in 2022? Makes me wonder if it is still active.

[1] https://solvespace.com/index.pl

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