FreeCAD is truly impressive and wonderful software, but yeh compared to commercial solutions it's lacking the same degree of polish (and that's not a criticsm,

FreeCAD is truly impressive and wonderful software, but yeh compared to commercial solutions it's lacking the same degree of polish (and that's not a criticsm, considering the price-points!). Both Dad and I use it at home for our 3D printing modelling, however at work I get to use SolidWorks and previously have used NX. Compared to them, I think the most common pinch point for me is how segmented sketches vs extrusions are. In Solidworks, you literally click a surface (plane, surface face of parametric solid, etc.) and just draw. Then you grab it and pull it out. It automagically does all the line constraints, etc. and there's not quite the same degree of separation as FreeCAD requires, where I have to make a dedicated sketch in one area, then switch to the other area to do the extrusion of it. Indeed, this sort of UI polish seems to be where most of my issues lie, rather than specific features missing. I get the suspicion that the people working on FreeCAD are probably the ones who really enjoy writing an elegant parametric modelling program, so they're all about the engine and the UX becomes a little bit of an afterthought. That's not to criticise them, but rather highlight that a commerical entity is able to pay money to get all of those 'less sexy' jobs completed to a high quality. It's a timely reminder to me that there's a requirement for all types in a community project, including people who aren't the flashy wunderkind producing the sexy engineered solutions - you just as much need the person who puts in the hard and thankless work making all the documentation neat, logical and consistent. Nevertheless, I don't think I'll be paying for a SolidWorks licence at home anytime soon, so I'm really appreciative of everything that the FreeCAD team has done. edit: To be clear, if you're wanting to learn CAD then FreeCAD is an admirable choice and will teach you well. Indeed, some of the extra steps it requires is probably good from a learning perspective, because it makes you think through the process more completely and logically. In that sense, the handholding and coddling of some of the more sophisticated commercial packages can be detrimental, because you don't really learn how every part goes together specifically as you're developing your model. I definitely don't mean any of my post to come across as criticism meant to deter anyone from trying FreeCAD. I was more trying to draw out the broader point that all too often, volunteer projects suffer from someone not doing 'the boring job', because using FreeCAD vs. commerical packages reminded me of that insight.