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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 ma

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
        It's also a counterpoint to "but it's doing a complicated job so the UI has to be complicated" nonsense defence that gets brought up in FreeCAD's defence a lot.
        lelanthran 4y ago
        > It's also a counterpoint to "but it's doing a complicated job so the UI has to be complicated" nonsense defence that gets brought up in FreeCAD's defence a lot. That defence is used for $SUPERIOR_LANGUAGE too. Look at the large numbers of devs who feel that the extra cognitive load needed to learn (for example) monads is worth it. Or the large number of posts explaining Rusts syntactical mess as "It's doing a complicated job so the interface has to be complicated." Hell, nevermind languages, that argument gets thrown across the entire tech stack - the submission yesterday about complexity had a number of posters who felt that there's no additional complexity in using Kubernetes even for an application that never needs to scale horizontally! Is it any surprise then that we see the same argument for different tech, even though it's a clearly invalid argument 99% of the time.
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

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
      It's also a counterpoint to "but it's doing a complicated job so the UI has to be complicated" nonsense defence that gets brought up in FreeCAD's defence a lot.
      - lelanthran 4y ago
        > It's also a counterpoint to "but it's doing a complicated job so the UI has to be complicated" nonsense defence that gets brought up in FreeCAD's defence a lot. That defence is used for $SUPERIOR_LANGUAGE too. Look at the large numbers of devs who feel that the extra cognitive load needed to learn (for example) monads is worth it. Or the large number of posts explaining Rusts syntactical mess as "It's doing a complicated job so the interface has to be complicated." Hell, nevermind languages, that argument gets thrown across the entire tech stack - the submission yesterday about complexity had a number of posters who felt that there's no additional complexity in using Kubernetes even for an application that never needs to scale horizontally! Is it any surprise then that we see the same argument for different tech, even though it's a clearly invalid argument 99% of the time.

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