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I love the idea of FreeCAD so much that I committed pretty much a month to doing all my newer projects in it, watching tutorials, etc… and in the end had to giv

by sen 5y ago

I love the idea of FreeCAD so much that I committed pretty much a month to doing all my newer projects in it, watching tutorials, etc… and in the end had to give up and go back to Fusion 360. I’m not some long term die-hard F360 fan either, just a casual hobbyist maker who uses all sorts of tools (I still regularly just whip things up in Tinkercad for the printers) but FreeCAD is just so damn hard to get things from your head to the screen. It feels like you’re constantly trying to fit square pegs into round holes just to do basic things.

Accujack 5y ago
I don't trust Autodesk and I bailed from F360 when they crippled the hobbyist version, but I ended up having to go back to a single user subscription for now. CAD/CAM programs are a "hard" type of software to write. I view them as similar in difficulty to free operating systems in technical difficulty and scope of the project. Before Linux there were only a few options for Unix-like OSs (Minix, Coherent, etc), but none of them particularly good for much except for academic purposes. Real work still took a licensed copy of Unix. There still hasn't been a similar project to produce a CAD system (not just 3d modeling, but parametric CAD) created that's open source. There are some great programs for 2d cad, for running machine tools and CNC routers, but beyond things like FreeCAD there's nothing available in the open source space that's comparable to even the cheapest commercial offering.
- sen 5y ago
  Completely agree with everything you're saying. It's a tough problem to solve, and I'd love something like FreeCAD to actually be able to complete with Fusion 360. I think with the explosion of the hobbyist maker scene and how common 3D printers are getting it's inevitable that something rises up eventually, but who knows.
- bb88 5y ago
  Have you tried alibre cad? I hear it's a pretty good alternative to F360.
  - Accujack 5y ago
    As a CAD system it's okay, I've tried it. However, for mechanical design and manufacturing integrated CAM is a huge advantage. CAM is really a related problem in open source to having a good CAD system... it's just about as complicated (if not more) mathematically and there's a big advantage in terms of complexity of the software and ease of use if CAM is integrated with CAD. Lots of people have noticed this with Fusion 360... the ability to switch back and forth between workspaces, from Design to manufacture(CAM or 3d print or whatever) is huge. So if all I needed was CAD, I'd consider Alibre or Rhino. For CAD with integrated CAM, there's no alternative to Fusion that doesn't cost over $10k per seat. Which sucks, because it's an Autodesk product and a subscription service rather than stand alone software.

by sen 5y ago

Accujack 5y ago

I don't trust Autodesk and I bailed from F360 when they crippled the hobbyist version, but I ended up having to go back to a single user subscription for now. CAD/CAM programs are a "hard" type of software to write. I view them as similar in difficulty to free operating systems in technical difficulty and scope of the project. Before Linux there were only a few options for Unix-like OSs (Minix, Coherent, etc), but none of them particularly good for much except for academic purposes. Real work still took a licensed copy of Unix. There still hasn't been a similar project to produce a CAD system (not just 3d modeling, but parametric CAD) created that's open source. There are some great programs for 2d cad, for running machine tools and CNC routers, but beyond things like FreeCAD there's nothing available in the open source space that's comparable to even the cheapest commercial offering.

sen 5y ago
Completely agree with everything you're saying. It's a tough problem to solve, and I'd love something like FreeCAD to actually be able to complete with Fusion 360. I think with the explosion of the hobbyist maker scene and how common 3D printers are getting it's inevitable that something rises up eventually, but who knows.
bb88 5y ago
Have you tried alibre cad? I hear it's a pretty good alternative to F360.
- Accujack 5y ago
  As a CAD system it's okay, I've tried it. However, for mechanical design and manufacturing integrated CAM is a huge advantage. CAM is really a related problem in open source to having a good CAD system... it's just about as complicated (if not more) mathematically and there's a big advantage in terms of complexity of the software and ease of use if CAM is integrated with CAD. Lots of people have noticed this with Fusion 360... the ability to switch back and forth between workspaces, from Design to manufacture(CAM or 3d print or whatever) is huge. So if all I needed was CAD, I'd consider Alibre or Rhino. For CAD with integrated CAM, there's no alternative to Fusion that doesn't cost over $10k per seat. Which sucks, because it's an Autodesk product and a subscription service rather than stand alone software.