11 ms·

FreeCAD Day 2023: Report and continued discussion

147 points by app4soft 4y ago

mitthrowaway2 4y ago
I didn't know that there was a FreeCAD Day! But I'll take this opportunity to just give thanks to the FreeCAD developers for creating and sustaining an amazing program. We all know it's not perfect, but it's already incredibly powerful and I'm now using it professionally in place of SolidWorks. Not only do I save a ton of money, I feel way more in control of my work, and have ownership of my hard-earned skills. I can write my own Python routines to automate parametric modelling and use FreeCAD as a back-end for doing geometric calculations. It's fantastic and I'm grateful for it. Thank you.
- FpUser 4y ago
  I do not want to sound negative towards something that is a gift but when I tried to use it in place of SW and it is so far behind from a practical point of view.
  - syntaxing 4y ago
    Have you used Catia before? I used to think Catia was the dumbest CAD package ever. After being forced to use it for about a year, I honestly get why they’re made that way now. And dare I say, Catia is actually a pretty good CAD package. (I’ve lived and breathed solidworks for about a decade, used and trained in Creo, Inventor, and now Catia). I think FreeCAD is modeled (pun intended) to be more like Catia hence why it feels so far behind.
    - FpUser 4y ago
      No Catia. Here is my story. While I mostly do software at some point I needed to design some piece of equipment from scratch. At the time I happened to have access to Solidworks and without any prior experience in mechanical CAD I was able to do it in about a month. Parts, assembly, subassemblies, regular CNC parts, sheet metal, welds, fastening. Stellar. Despite absolutely insane power the tool is super easy to use for complete noob. I tried later on to do something like this in FreeCad - never fucking again.
      - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
        Yes, SolidWorks is easy to pick up and use with no training. FreeCAD is not; it requires dedicated time to learn, following tutorials, and at least a few throw-away projects to gain proficiency. There are a lot of easy mistakes that can sabotage progress, and multiple ways of doing things that are different under the hood, where those differences aren't obvious, including some ways that are bad and wrong. But there's a lot it can do, and it gets better all the time.
        FpUser 4y ago
        My goal was to produce the design, not to master design tool. The less time I spent the better is my ROI. I have neither time nor desire to dedicate myself to be a master of particular tool.
        lelanthran 4y ago
        >>> While I mostly do software at some point I needed to design some piece of equipment from scratch. At the time I happened to have access to Solidworks and without any prior experience in mechanical CAD I was able to do it in about a month. Parts, assembly, subassemblies, regular CNC parts, sheet metal, welds, fastening. Stellar. Despite absolutely insane power the tool is super easy to use for complete noob. I tried later on to do something like this in FreeCad - never fucking again. >> Yes, SolidWorks is easy to pick up and use with no training. FreeCAD is not; it requires dedicated time to learn, following tutorials, and at least a few throw-away projects to gain proficiency. There are a lot of easy mistakes that can sabotage progress, and multiple ways of doing things that are different under the hood, where those differences aren't obvious, including some ways that are bad and wrong. But there's a lot it can do, and it gets better all the time. > My goal was to produce the design, not to master design tool. The less time I spent the better is my ROI. I have neither time nor desire to dedicate myself to be a master of particular tool. This is actually how a lot of the "Niche language $FOO is a superior language" arguments go.
        regularfry 4y ago
    - OJFord 4y ago
      (Not GP) I've never used Catia and I'm not in mech eng, but to me FreeCAD seems like an MVP Fusion360 clone inexplicably made with a '90s GUI toolkit. I'm glad it exists, and appreciate the herculean task that it is, it's just a shame, and it really is clunky/unintuitive compared to F360. Personally I think some focus on UI & polish would go a long way, drive more adoption, which is presumably somewhere on the long road to more support in development and funding. I get the impression it's probably made by and for a few though, scratching an itch and not too bothered about adoption. Even among hobbyists it seems to be a fairly uncommon choice - pick a Youtube channel and it's usually Fusion360 I find (and as far as I've seen not sponsored, unlike Altium Designer say which is an even weirder (more limited/expensive) choice for a hobbyist).
      - alpaca128 4y ago
        As a hobbyist I can't imagine using anything but OpenSCAD. I know it's not comparable in capabilities and has its quirks, but it feels like Python for CAD - I get stuff done quick. It's so simple the cheatsheet covering 100% of commands takes up one page, so I don't need to waste time looking up details. And as it's all code it spares me from clicking through all kinds of menus. I do miss FreeCAD's chamfer & fillet tools, though.
        regularfry 4y ago
        Where FreeCAD ought to be able to take over is in the things that are a bit more complex that OpenSCAD just doesn't have the tooling for. Multiple-part assemblies is one of them that immediately comes to mind, now that there's some reasonable FreeCAD functionality for it.
        Brian_K_White 4y ago
        Fillets.
        floxy 4y ago
        >Python for CAD You might be interested in CadQuery: https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery
- kwk1 4y ago
  > I didn't know that there was a FreeCAD Day! Being the first one, and with some concern about limited space, we did not broadcast it super-widely. With good reason, too, since it was packed.
inamberclad 4y ago
I really want to like FreeCAD, but the lack of a native assembly system is the top killer for me. I know that plugins exist, but they have too many steps involved. I want to be able to just click on two holes on different bodies and immediately mate them with a rotating joint. Other nits exist, and random crashes are a huge problem for me, but until FreeCAD has better assemblies, I'll sadly be stuck with the extremely user-hostile Fusion360.
- angry_moose 4y ago
  Yeah, it's unfortunate. At best they're still 20 years behind the major players - I started working in Inventor in 05 and Solidworks in 08 and I'd gladly take those out of date versions over current FreeCAD. Its impressive what they've managed to do (geometry kernels are incredibly difficult) but its got a long way to go. I'm begrudgingly using Solid Edge Community at the moment.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  I haven’t had random crashes since 0.19. 0.20.1 and 0.20.2 seem pretty solid so far but I’m not a pro CAD user. Just designing things for my 3D printer. The assembly situation does suck. But I’ve been using Assembly 4 and that seems the easiest to understand. But what’s worse is that as a non-cad person. It’s difficult to get started still. The information is there but I’ve been using FreeCAD for years, and often the best place to look is YouTube for help. I’ve also found the forum a bit hostile because I ask stupid questions since I don’t know how to ask in the right way with the right words. I didn’t even realise why I might need an assembly workbench until very recently and then that changed my perspective on how I structured all my models. I wish there was a higher level explanation of how to use FreeCAD for complete beginners.
  - bsder 4y ago
    The topological renumbering/renaming problem is THE killer bug that FreeCAD has got to fix. Until that bug is gone, FreeCAD has no future. Unfortunately, as I understand it, the only way to truly get rid of that is to entirely rewrite the geometry kernel. :(
phkahler 4y ago
>> . At a few points during this discussion there was a complaint, and another person would respond with "but you can work around that by"... which does not invalidate the complaint. Or "oh, we have that feature, you just can't find it"... also still a valid complaint. This is a meta complaint I have with a LOT of software. The problem AFAICT stems from how we create software. For a developer the idea of editing a configuration file or other tedious minutia to get what we want isn't a big deal. It IS to "normal" users of software. A lot of times a developer will appreciate a simple way to do something even if they don't see it as being worth the time to implement. There is a reason people love Solvespace over FreeCAD even though it is incredibly limited in comparison. What it does, it does well by users and is even a joy to use in comparison. All software can benefit from going beyond "there exists a way to do what you want".
- duxup 4y ago
  It’s always a balance though isn’t it? I struggle to work with people can justify just about any complaint. Before I know it, I have suggestions to put wordy explanations everywhere, and a dozen unrelated buttons on a given page. All because three or four people who may not have been paying attention while they did the thing provided feedback… sometimes there are people who don’t even use the software…. I wish I could find a reliable way of getting feedback from a broad range of users not just a handful who wish to complain. I want the software to work for most people who: 1. Use the software. 2. Are trying. 3. Are reasonably good at their job. Sometimes I feel like I’m asked to make changes that hurt the majority at the behest of a few.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    Oh I get that we have to decide what's worth doing and what's not. My point is that developers have some very different ideas about what's easy or reasonable. Just try to take that into account when deciding what's relevant. Think of as a bias that complicates an already subjective decision.
  - flaviut 4y ago
    I think you're describing biases in your sampling methodology. When folks do surveys do political polls, for example, the worst & lowest quality polls are basically facebook polls because individuals select themselves by clicking an ad. Higher quality polls work by having a representative sample of the population, and getting that is very difficult & time consuming. In software, I think you have two options here: - it is practical to capture analytics from about 100% of the population, so if it's possible to analyze this data to determine if your software works well, great! - you can work hard to get feedback from a representative cohort. not sure how to do this... gift cards, swag, "you're part of the cool users club" communications? But be sure you're the one doing the sampling, and vet users' demographics (whatever that means for you) yourself.
agumonkey 4y ago
I wonder if freecad could see a surge of devs and improvements like what blender went through.
- regularfry 4y ago
  It needs the will to follow through on major UI upheaval the way Blender did. Right now they're high on their own supply. Getting toponaming fixed will probably help, but I'll be surprised if it's enough.
- ghostpepper 4y ago
  The existing community would need to agree that the status quo is a problem first, and from what I've seen they're still quite divided on that issue.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    It's an interesting question actually. How did blender leads turned the problem around and manage to refocus volunteers energy into a coherent improving roadmap.
    - jononor 4y ago
      Blender as an open source project was borne out of a company that ceased to exist. It has had multiple people working on it full time with a product mindset from the very onset. This is very different from largely volunteer/spare time projects like FreeCAD. Both are great though :)
- marmetio 4y ago
  Maybe. Blender has had an organization behind it for about 20 years [1]. FreeCAD formed its organization less than 2 years ago [2]. It'll be a while no matter what, but their success will largely depend on how well their roadmap aligns with the needs of their potential financial backers. [1] https://www.blender.org/about/ https://www.blender.org/about/ [2] https://fpa.freecad.org/ https://fpa.freecad.org/
nirav72 4y ago
I've been meaning to look at FreeCAD as an alternative to Fusion360. Mostly creating 3d printing models. Any good resources for learning FreeCAD?
- DanTheManPR 4y ago
  There are a number of good tutorial channels on Youtube. I think the best is Joko Engineering: https://www.youtube.com/c/JokoEngineeringhelp https://www.youtube.com/c/JokoEngineeringhelp
- TrevorFSmith 4y ago
  If learning with videos works for you then I recommend MangoJelly. It's a silly name, true, but he produces several great tutorials per week! Here's his playlist for getting started: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWuyJLVUNtc0UszswD0oD5q4VeWTrK7JC https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWuyJLVUNtc0UszswD0oD5q4V...
- WillAdams 4y ago
  I just posted a link to a "Bookazine" from Hackspace magazine: https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad (check the pagination if you're going to print it, missing page 25 last I checked)
sircastor 4y ago
I love FreeCAD. It’s not the most fully featured CAD software of course, but I love that my designs are not encumbered behind a paywall or a freemium model that will go away when it becomes inconvenient for someone. FreeCAD is my current go-to CAD program. I’m really glad I finally took the time to learn it.
- gdelfino01 4y ago
  What path did you take to learn it? YouTube?
  - crtified 4y ago
    To chime in with my own learning experience so far. I've done the standard: Google "freecad tutorial", click open a bunch of likely-looking result tabs, and have a quick browse to locate quality. From youtube, to written and illustrated guides, etc. It's not difficult to find useful instruction. But the overall pool of easily-searchable knowledge suffers from that standard internet Time Fragmentation effect : that is, within months and years of publication, most of it is out of date by anywhere ranging from A Little to A Lot; a degree which is only determinable to the casual reader through trial-and-error. So a certain degree of inefficiency and double-work is near guaranteed.
  - sircastor 4y ago
    I think I watched a couple of videos - really just to get going from the "How do I make a block that looks like this?" I didn't initially understand the idea of workbenches so just having someone say "Do this here" helped. A recent example of using a video to help me understand was how to generate a bevel gear. After that, I would run into questions and google searches tend to help a lot. Just last week I was trying to figure out how to cut a hole in a curved surface and found a forum thread that suggested a good solution. (That solution felt a little weird from a design standpoint, but it worked, and the history was maintainable.) Searchable forums are tremendously useful for software packages at this level.
- sgt 4y ago
  Recently started with FreeCAD because for [reasons] Fusion360 no longer worked. So I gave in and gave FreeCAD a chance. At first I tried without reading documentation and simply clicking around. Quite difficult. But start reading some docs and watch a turorial on how to use sketches and it makes a lot of sense. Very happy to "own" my own CAD package as well. Got really tired of the SaaS nature of Fusion.
ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
Can FreeCAD save .stl files yet? Last time I tried it (2019) the exported models (made only from extrusions and rotations) were totally broken. I want to script up these models in python, but if I can't print them then it's not useful to me.
- tadfisher 4y ago
  Hmm, I've definitely saved simple models in STL and STEP for EDA parts, and it seemed fine. But these were edits of existing models.
- jstanley 4y ago
  I've never had any problem with FreeCAD-generated STL files, and I've made hundreds, and I've been using it since 2017. Can you share a FreeCAD project & the generated broken STL file and I'll see if I can reproduce the problem?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    It is possible (and pretty easy) to use FreeCAD in a way that it will generate faulty STL files. It all depends on how you did the modelling in FreeCAD. I think it's an example of how there are many ways to accomplish something in it, but some of those ways are wrong -- and you won't know it at the time. What I do when I get a faulty STL out of it is to use other programs to fix the STL. That gets me there. And many slicers these days (especially Prusa) are getting much better at doing this themselves, making it less necessary to do it as a separate step.
- regularfry 4y ago
  I do a lot of this. Sometimes I do notice PrusaSlicer complaining about the geometry, but I can't remember seeing an instance where the export was broken beyond the slicer's ability to cope with it. There might be something specific in your workflow that's running into a bug I see though. If you still see problems today it might be worth a bug report.
  - regularfry 4y ago
Awelton 4y ago
I work in 3d modeling for a living and I have tried freecad so many times I have lost count. I am glad they work to provide a product for the people that find it useful, but I personally find it completely unintuitive. It just takes too many steps to do things that are a single action in ever other package. I want to like it, and I give it another shot a couple times a year, but I just can't get in sync with whatever the intended workflow was meant to be.
- ActorNightly 4y ago
  I found actual parametric modeling to be fairly straightfoward once you get used to all the commands, but things like Assembly which should be an integral part of CAD are far behind. In solidworks, its super easy to create an assembly, import your parts, set the constraints, see how things move, and measure distances. In Freecad, you have to use external workbenches, and it seems like there are 5 that do the above to a certain extent but not fully, and with many more steps.
rolen23 4y ago
[dead]
susell93 4y ago
[dead]
sschueller 4y ago
I have been forcing myself to use FreeCAD after I switched to linux and I could no longer use my spacemouse[1] in Fusion 360. Fusion 360 also started removing more features and then removed access to the browser version even thought I was paying for an expensive subscription. It is an uphill battle as Fusion360 is very intuitive and forgiving while FreeCAD can do most of the same things but you need to do it the right way. Especially changing for example dimensions later on can break the whole thing. FreeCAD seems to suffer under a sort of feature creep, there are multiple ways and buttons to do the same thing but not exactly the same. For example an extrusion. I wish there was a general overhaul of the UI similar to what was done in blender which is a joy to use even thought it is extremely complex. However every time someone does ask me which parametric 3d tool they should learn I say go with FreeCAD. For a beginner the learning curve is the same as for Fusion 360 and in the end you will be much better off no matter what. (I wasted to much time exporting MY 3d models from Fusion360) [1] https://3dconnexion.com/uk/spacemouse/ https://3dconnexion.com/uk/spacemouse/
- ilyt 4y ago
  > FreeCAD seems to suffer under a sort of feature creep, there are multiple ways and buttons to do the same thing but not exactly the same. For example an extrusion. Or how there are like 2 or 3 different "2D editors", each with different set of features.
- twarge 4y ago
  I too had to bail out of Fusion and landed in FreeCAD quite happily. There’s a tendency to be unable to delete things that work in large collaboratively developed software. But it feels like that’s what’s needed with regards to the legacy workbenches so that new users don’t go astray from the intended path.
weinzierl 4y ago
I recently got into Blender mostly for Hard Surface Modeling. I always wanted to try FreeCAD but never was sure if it is worth it. Blender is certainly no CAD software but it is incredibly powerful and with the right plugins it kind of can almost disguise as a CAD app. If we disregard the different paradigms for a moment: What can FreeCAD do, that Blender can't? Should I give it a try?
- sschueller 4y ago
  I don't see blender as a dimensional accurate parametric CAD tool although it may be able to do that. In FreeCAD and others like Fusion 360 you create sketches on planes with dimensions that can be variables. You then extrude, make more sketches based on previous features etc. This allows you at a later time to change the value of a dimension and it propagates through the entire part. When it comes to 3d printing I use this a lot of things like lids which need to snap on. There is a certain amount of spacing between the lid of the box which may need to be adjusted to get the right amount of "snap". With parametric modeling I can just go and adjust the variable of my gap to be a bit smaller or larger and it will adjust all places where this applies.
  - jbd0 4y ago
    There are ways to do this in Blender. I typically select all objects, hit tab to go into Edit Mode, turn on X-Ray Mode, Select all vertices that I want to move, move them (with snap) to the vertex I want to key off of (limiting movement to a specific axis), and then finally moving them again by entering the value of the distance (again, limiting movement to a specific axis).
ravagat 4y ago
I did not know FreeCAD day existed until now, how cool. Are there any examples of industrial usage/application of FreeCAD? Like videos?
WillAdams 4y ago
For folks considering starting in FreeCAD, the _Hackspace_ folks did a series of articles which they have collected as a "Bookazine" which is distributed as a free PDF: https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad Note/check: >For anyone who prints this out, they failed to insert a page 25, so if you’re printing double-sided, print up through pg. 24, then print page 26 separately, then print pages 27 onward to get things to back up properly.
Saris 4y ago
I tried FreeCAD last year, and exporting for 3D printing led to round parts being made of distinct 'faces' instead of anything close to round. I never could figure out how to solve that. In general I found it almost comically hard to use, but I learned on Fusion360 so I imagine I don't have the experience of someone who learned on older CAD software that was similar in UI.
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  In case it helps: Mesh Design workbench > Meshes > Create Mesh from Shape... > select your object; set surface and angular deviation to something small like 1 µm and 1° > OK > select the newly generated mesh > File > Export... > to STL / OBJ / your preferred 3D printing format. Yes, it should be easier than this. The STL export preferences should allow you to specify a mesh tolerance for the export process. I'm sure that's how it will work in a future version, but this is how you can do it now.
  - Saris 4y ago
    Thanks! It's so strange that it doesn't default to something reasonable like that. It needs an "export to STL" button that just works with one click.
    - chennes 4y ago
      We merged a tiny pull request that improves the default exported STL quality just a few days ago, it should improve matters greatly for 3D printing.
      - Saris 4y ago
        Awesome! That's good to hear.

147 points by app4soft 4y ago

I didn't know that there was a FreeCAD Day! But I'll take this opportunity to just give thanks to the FreeCAD developers for creating and sustaining an amazing program. We all know it's not perfect, but it's already incredibly powerful and I'm now using it professionally in place of SolidWorks. Not only do I save a ton of money, I feel way more in control of my work, and have ownership of my hard-earned skills. I can write my own Python routines to automate parametric modelling and use FreeCAD as a back-end for doing geometric calculations. It's fantastic and I'm grateful for it. Thank you.

FpUser 4y ago
I do not want to sound negative towards something that is a gift but when I tried to use it in place of SW and it is so far behind from a practical point of view.
- syntaxing 4y ago
  Have you used Catia before? I used to think Catia was the dumbest CAD package ever. After being forced to use it for about a year, I honestly get why they’re made that way now. And dare I say, Catia is actually a pretty good CAD package. (I’ve lived and breathed solidworks for about a decade, used and trained in Creo, Inventor, and now Catia). I think FreeCAD is modeled (pun intended) to be more like Catia hence why it feels so far behind.
  - FpUser 4y ago
    No Catia. Here is my story. While I mostly do software at some point I needed to design some piece of equipment from scratch. At the time I happened to have access to Solidworks and without any prior experience in mechanical CAD I was able to do it in about a month. Parts, assembly, subassemblies, regular CNC parts, sheet metal, welds, fastening. Stellar. Despite absolutely insane power the tool is super easy to use for complete noob. I tried later on to do something like this in FreeCad - never fucking again.
    - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
      Yes, SolidWorks is easy to pick up and use with no training. FreeCAD is not; it requires dedicated time to learn, following tutorials, and at least a few throw-away projects to gain proficiency. There are a lot of easy mistakes that can sabotage progress, and multiple ways of doing things that are different under the hood, where those differences aren't obvious, including some ways that are bad and wrong. But there's a lot it can do, and it gets better all the time.
      - FpUser 4y ago
        My goal was to produce the design, not to master design tool. The less time I spent the better is my ROI. I have neither time nor desire to dedicate myself to be a master of particular tool.
        lelanthran 4y ago
        >>> While I mostly do software at some point I needed to design some piece of equipment from scratch. At the time I happened to have access to Solidworks and without any prior experience in mechanical CAD I was able to do it in about a month. Parts, assembly, subassemblies, regular CNC parts, sheet metal, welds, fastening. Stellar. Despite absolutely insane power the tool is super easy to use for complete noob. I tried later on to do something like this in FreeCad - never fucking again. >> Yes, SolidWorks is easy to pick up and use with no training. FreeCAD is not; it requires dedicated time to learn, following tutorials, and at least a few throw-away projects to gain proficiency. There are a lot of easy mistakes that can sabotage progress, and multiple ways of doing things that are different under the hood, where those differences aren't obvious, including some ways that are bad and wrong. But there's a lot it can do, and it gets better all the time. > My goal was to produce the design, not to master design tool. The less time I spent the better is my ROI. I have neither time nor desire to dedicate myself to be a master of particular tool. This is actually how a lot of the "Niche language $FOO is a superior language" arguments go.
        regularfry 4y ago
  - OJFord 4y ago
    (Not GP) I've never used Catia and I'm not in mech eng, but to me FreeCAD seems like an MVP Fusion360 clone inexplicably made with a '90s GUI toolkit. I'm glad it exists, and appreciate the herculean task that it is, it's just a shame, and it really is clunky/unintuitive compared to F360. Personally I think some focus on UI & polish would go a long way, drive more adoption, which is presumably somewhere on the long road to more support in development and funding. I get the impression it's probably made by and for a few though, scratching an itch and not too bothered about adoption. Even among hobbyists it seems to be a fairly uncommon choice - pick a Youtube channel and it's usually Fusion360 I find (and as far as I've seen not sponsored, unlike Altium Designer say which is an even weirder (more limited/expensive) choice for a hobbyist).
    - alpaca128 4y ago
      As a hobbyist I can't imagine using anything but OpenSCAD. I know it's not comparable in capabilities and has its quirks, but it feels like Python for CAD - I get stuff done quick. It's so simple the cheatsheet covering 100% of commands takes up one page, so I don't need to waste time looking up details. And as it's all code it spares me from clicking through all kinds of menus. I do miss FreeCAD's chamfer & fillet tools, though.
      - regularfry 4y ago
        Where FreeCAD ought to be able to take over is in the things that are a bit more complex that OpenSCAD just doesn't have the tooling for. Multiple-part assemblies is one of them that immediately comes to mind, now that there's some reasonable FreeCAD functionality for it.
        Brian_K_White 4y ago
        Fillets.
      - floxy 4y ago
        >Python for CAD You might be interested in CadQuery: https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery
kwk1 4y ago
> I didn't know that there was a FreeCAD Day! Being the first one, and with some concern about limited space, we did not broadcast it super-widely. With good reason, too, since it was packed.

inamberclad 4y ago

I really want to like FreeCAD, but the lack of a native assembly system is the top killer for me. I know that plugins exist, but they have too many steps involved. I want to be able to just click on two holes on different bodies and immediately mate them with a rotating joint. Other nits exist, and random crashes are a huge problem for me, but until FreeCAD has better assemblies, I'll sadly be stuck with the extremely user-hostile Fusion360.

angry_moose 4y ago
Yeah, it's unfortunate. At best they're still 20 years behind the major players - I started working in Inventor in 05 and Solidworks in 08 and I'd gladly take those out of date versions over current FreeCAD. Its impressive what they've managed to do (geometry kernels are incredibly difficult) but its got a long way to go. I'm begrudgingly using Solid Edge Community at the moment.
2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
I haven’t had random crashes since 0.19. 0.20.1 and 0.20.2 seem pretty solid so far but I’m not a pro CAD user. Just designing things for my 3D printer. The assembly situation does suck. But I’ve been using Assembly 4 and that seems the easiest to understand. But what’s worse is that as a non-cad person. It’s difficult to get started still. The information is there but I’ve been using FreeCAD for years, and often the best place to look is YouTube for help. I’ve also found the forum a bit hostile because I ask stupid questions since I don’t know how to ask in the right way with the right words. I didn’t even realise why I might need an assembly workbench until very recently and then that changed my perspective on how I structured all my models. I wish there was a higher level explanation of how to use FreeCAD for complete beginners.
- bsder 4y ago
  The topological renumbering/renaming problem is THE killer bug that FreeCAD has got to fix. Until that bug is gone, FreeCAD has no future. Unfortunately, as I understand it, the only way to truly get rid of that is to entirely rewrite the geometry kernel. :(

phkahler 4y ago

>> . At a few points during this discussion there was a complaint, and another person would respond with "but you can work around that by"... which does not invalidate the complaint. Or "oh, we have that feature, you just can't find it"... also still a valid complaint. This is a meta complaint I have with a LOT of software. The problem AFAICT stems from how we create software. For a developer the idea of editing a configuration file or other tedious minutia to get what we want isn't a big deal. It IS to "normal" users of software. A lot of times a developer will appreciate a simple way to do something even if they don't see it as being worth the time to implement. There is a reason people love Solvespace over FreeCAD even though it is incredibly limited in comparison. What it does, it does well by users and is even a joy to use in comparison. All software can benefit from going beyond "there exists a way to do what you want".

duxup 4y ago
It’s always a balance though isn’t it? I struggle to work with people can justify just about any complaint. Before I know it, I have suggestions to put wordy explanations everywhere, and a dozen unrelated buttons on a given page. All because three or four people who may not have been paying attention while they did the thing provided feedback… sometimes there are people who don’t even use the software…. I wish I could find a reliable way of getting feedback from a broad range of users not just a handful who wish to complain. I want the software to work for most people who: 1. Use the software. 2. Are trying. 3. Are reasonably good at their job. Sometimes I feel like I’m asked to make changes that hurt the majority at the behest of a few.
- phkahler 4y ago
  Oh I get that we have to decide what's worth doing and what's not. My point is that developers have some very different ideas about what's easy or reasonable. Just try to take that into account when deciding what's relevant. Think of as a bias that complicates an already subjective decision.
- flaviut 4y ago
  I think you're describing biases in your sampling methodology. When folks do surveys do political polls, for example, the worst & lowest quality polls are basically facebook polls because individuals select themselves by clicking an ad. Higher quality polls work by having a representative sample of the population, and getting that is very difficult & time consuming. In software, I think you have two options here: - it is practical to capture analytics from about 100% of the population, so if it's possible to analyze this data to determine if your software works well, great! - you can work hard to get feedback from a representative cohort. not sure how to do this... gift cards, swag, "you're part of the cool users club" communications? But be sure you're the one doing the sampling, and vet users' demographics (whatever that means for you) yourself.

agumonkey 4y ago

I wonder if freecad could see a surge of devs and improvements like what blender went through.

regularfry 4y ago
It needs the will to follow through on major UI upheaval the way Blender did. Right now they're high on their own supply. Getting toponaming fixed will probably help, but I'll be surprised if it's enough.
ghostpepper 4y ago
The existing community would need to agree that the status quo is a problem first, and from what I've seen they're still quite divided on that issue.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  It's an interesting question actually. How did blender leads turned the problem around and manage to refocus volunteers energy into a coherent improving roadmap.
  - jononor 4y ago
    Blender as an open source project was borne out of a company that ceased to exist. It has had multiple people working on it full time with a product mindset from the very onset. This is very different from largely volunteer/spare time projects like FreeCAD. Both are great though :)
marmetio 4y ago
Maybe. Blender has had an organization behind it for about 20 years [1]. FreeCAD formed its organization less than 2 years ago [2]. It'll be a while no matter what, but their success will largely depend on how well their roadmap aligns with the needs of their potential financial backers. [1] https://www.blender.org/about/ https://www.blender.org/about/ [2] https://fpa.freecad.org/ https://fpa.freecad.org/

nirav72 4y ago

I've been meaning to look at FreeCAD as an alternative to Fusion360. Mostly creating 3d printing models. Any good resources for learning FreeCAD?

DanTheManPR 4y ago
There are a number of good tutorial channels on Youtube. I think the best is Joko Engineering: https://www.youtube.com/c/JokoEngineeringhelp https://www.youtube.com/c/JokoEngineeringhelp
TrevorFSmith 4y ago
If learning with videos works for you then I recommend MangoJelly. It's a silly name, true, but he produces several great tutorials per week! Here's his playlist for getting started: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWuyJLVUNtc0UszswD0oD5q4VeWTrK7JC https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWuyJLVUNtc0UszswD0oD5q4V...
WillAdams 4y ago
I just posted a link to a "Bookazine" from Hackspace magazine: https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad (check the pagination if you're going to print it, missing page 25 last I checked)

sircastor 4y ago

I love FreeCAD. It’s not the most fully featured CAD software of course, but I love that my designs are not encumbered behind a paywall or a freemium model that will go away when it becomes inconvenient for someone. FreeCAD is my current go-to CAD program. I’m really glad I finally took the time to learn it.

gdelfino01 4y ago
What path did you take to learn it? YouTube?
- crtified 4y ago
  To chime in with my own learning experience so far. I've done the standard: Google "freecad tutorial", click open a bunch of likely-looking result tabs, and have a quick browse to locate quality. From youtube, to written and illustrated guides, etc. It's not difficult to find useful instruction. But the overall pool of easily-searchable knowledge suffers from that standard internet Time Fragmentation effect : that is, within months and years of publication, most of it is out of date by anywhere ranging from A Little to A Lot; a degree which is only determinable to the casual reader through trial-and-error. So a certain degree of inefficiency and double-work is near guaranteed.
- sircastor 4y ago
  I think I watched a couple of videos - really just to get going from the "How do I make a block that looks like this?" I didn't initially understand the idea of workbenches so just having someone say "Do this here" helped. A recent example of using a video to help me understand was how to generate a bevel gear. After that, I would run into questions and google searches tend to help a lot. Just last week I was trying to figure out how to cut a hole in a curved surface and found a forum thread that suggested a good solution. (That solution felt a little weird from a design standpoint, but it worked, and the history was maintainable.) Searchable forums are tremendously useful for software packages at this level.
sgt 4y ago
Recently started with FreeCAD because for [reasons] Fusion360 no longer worked. So I gave in and gave FreeCAD a chance. At first I tried without reading documentation and simply clicking around. Quite difficult. But start reading some docs and watch a turorial on how to use sketches and it makes a lot of sense. Very happy to "own" my own CAD package as well. Got really tired of the SaaS nature of Fusion.

ravel-bar-foo 4y ago

Can FreeCAD save .stl files yet? Last time I tried it (2019) the exported models (made only from extrusions and rotations) were totally broken. I want to script up these models in python, but if I can't print them then it's not useful to me.

tadfisher 4y ago
Hmm, I've definitely saved simple models in STL and STEP for EDA parts, and it seemed fine. But these were edits of existing models.
jstanley 4y ago
I've never had any problem with FreeCAD-generated STL files, and I've made hundreds, and I've been using it since 2017. Can you share a FreeCAD project & the generated broken STL file and I'll see if I can reproduce the problem?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  It is possible (and pretty easy) to use FreeCAD in a way that it will generate faulty STL files. It all depends on how you did the modelling in FreeCAD. I think it's an example of how there are many ways to accomplish something in it, but some of those ways are wrong -- and you won't know it at the time. What I do when I get a faulty STL out of it is to use other programs to fix the STL. That gets me there. And many slicers these days (especially Prusa) are getting much better at doing this themselves, making it less necessary to do it as a separate step.
regularfry 4y ago
I do a lot of this. Sometimes I do notice PrusaSlicer complaining about the geometry, but I can't remember seeing an instance where the export was broken beyond the slicer's ability to cope with it. There might be something specific in your workflow that's running into a bug I see though. If you still see problems today it might be worth a bug report.
- regularfry 4y ago

Awelton 4y ago

I work in 3d modeling for a living and I have tried freecad so many times I have lost count. I am glad they work to provide a product for the people that find it useful, but I personally find it completely unintuitive. It just takes too many steps to do things that are a single action in ever other package. I want to like it, and I give it another shot a couple times a year, but I just can't get in sync with whatever the intended workflow was meant to be.

ActorNightly 4y ago
I found actual parametric modeling to be fairly straightfoward once you get used to all the commands, but things like Assembly which should be an integral part of CAD are far behind. In solidworks, its super easy to create an assembly, import your parts, set the constraints, see how things move, and measure distances. In Freecad, you have to use external workbenches, and it seems like there are 5 that do the above to a certain extent but not fully, and with many more steps.

rolen23 4y ago

[dead]

susell93 4y ago

[dead]

sschueller 4y ago

I have been forcing myself to use FreeCAD after I switched to linux and I could no longer use my spacemouse[1] in Fusion 360. Fusion 360 also started removing more features and then removed access to the browser version even thought I was paying for an expensive subscription. It is an uphill battle as Fusion360 is very intuitive and forgiving while FreeCAD can do most of the same things but you need to do it the right way. Especially changing for example dimensions later on can break the whole thing. FreeCAD seems to suffer under a sort of feature creep, there are multiple ways and buttons to do the same thing but not exactly the same. For example an extrusion. I wish there was a general overhaul of the UI similar to what was done in blender which is a joy to use even thought it is extremely complex. However every time someone does ask me which parametric 3d tool they should learn I say go with FreeCAD. For a beginner the learning curve is the same as for Fusion 360 and in the end you will be much better off no matter what. (I wasted to much time exporting MY 3d models from Fusion360) [1] https://3dconnexion.com/uk/spacemouse/ https://3dconnexion.com/uk/spacemouse/

ilyt 4y ago
> FreeCAD seems to suffer under a sort of feature creep, there are multiple ways and buttons to do the same thing but not exactly the same. For example an extrusion. Or how there are like 2 or 3 different "2D editors", each with different set of features.
twarge 4y ago
I too had to bail out of Fusion and landed in FreeCAD quite happily. There’s a tendency to be unable to delete things that work in large collaboratively developed software. But it feels like that’s what’s needed with regards to the legacy workbenches so that new users don’t go astray from the intended path.

weinzierl 4y ago

I recently got into Blender mostly for Hard Surface Modeling. I always wanted to try FreeCAD but never was sure if it is worth it. Blender is certainly no CAD software but it is incredibly powerful and with the right plugins it kind of can almost disguise as a CAD app. If we disregard the different paradigms for a moment: What can FreeCAD do, that Blender can't? Should I give it a try?

sschueller 4y ago
I don't see blender as a dimensional accurate parametric CAD tool although it may be able to do that. In FreeCAD and others like Fusion 360 you create sketches on planes with dimensions that can be variables. You then extrude, make more sketches based on previous features etc. This allows you at a later time to change the value of a dimension and it propagates through the entire part. When it comes to 3d printing I use this a lot of things like lids which need to snap on. There is a certain amount of spacing between the lid of the box which may need to be adjusted to get the right amount of "snap". With parametric modeling I can just go and adjust the variable of my gap to be a bit smaller or larger and it will adjust all places where this applies.
- jbd0 4y ago
  There are ways to do this in Blender. I typically select all objects, hit tab to go into Edit Mode, turn on X-Ray Mode, Select all vertices that I want to move, move them (with snap) to the vertex I want to key off of (limiting movement to a specific axis), and then finally moving them again by entering the value of the distance (again, limiting movement to a specific axis).

ravagat 4y ago

I did not know FreeCAD day existed until now, how cool. Are there any examples of industrial usage/application of FreeCAD? Like videos?

WillAdams 4y ago

For folks considering starting in FreeCAD, the _Hackspace_ folks did a series of articles which they have collected as a "Bookazine" which is distributed as a free PDF: https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad Note/check: >For anyone who prints this out, they failed to insert a page 25, so if you’re printing double-sided, print up through pg. 24, then print page 26 separately, then print pages 27 onward to get things to back up properly.

Saris 4y ago

I tried FreeCAD last year, and exporting for 3D printing led to round parts being made of distinct 'faces' instead of anything close to round. I never could figure out how to solve that. In general I found it almost comically hard to use, but I learned on Fusion360 so I imagine I don't have the experience of someone who learned on older CAD software that was similar in UI.

mitthrowaway2 4y ago
In case it helps: Mesh Design workbench > Meshes > Create Mesh from Shape... > select your object; set surface and angular deviation to something small like 1 µm and 1° > OK > select the newly generated mesh > File > Export... > to STL / OBJ / your preferred 3D printing format. Yes, it should be easier than this. The STL export preferences should allow you to specify a mesh tolerance for the export process. I'm sure that's how it will work in a future version, but this is how you can do it now.
- Saris 4y ago
  Thanks! It's so strange that it doesn't default to something reasonable like that. It needs an "export to STL" button that just works with one click.
  - chennes 4y ago
    We merged a tiny pull request that improves the default exported STL quality just a few days ago, it should improve matters greatly for 3D printing.
    - Saris 4y ago
      Awesome! That's good to hear.