8 ms·

FreeCAD User Book (2019)

120 points by app4soft 4y ago

codazoda 4y ago
This is interesting. I recently downloaded FreeCAD and abandoned it after just a few minutes. So, I think I can understand where this project came from. I have experience with 2D CAD programs like LibreCAD and CadStd and 3D geometric tools like TinkerCAD, OpenSCAD, the late ABC 123, and Sketchup. But, FreeCAD doesn’t really seem to work like these tools. There seems to be a lot to learn and I just found myself frustrated. I did manage to create a general shape I was working on but I didn’t feel like I understood very well. Anyway, some simple primer for people without a drafting background may be in order (and I imagine that isn’t too hard to find). This primer also seems to be over my head, getting into language I don’t understand right off the bat. Seems like the author has a bit of background I lack.
- steve918 4y ago
  I've spent some time trying to learn FreeCAD and ultimately decided that the cost of Fusion 360 pays for itself several times over in productivity compared to trying to deal with how clunky and difficult FreeCAD is. Alternatively PCB stuff in Fusion is pretty horrible and IMO worse than Eagle was before they all but abandon it and started shoe honing it into Fusion. Meanwhile KiCad continues to get better and more feature rich.
  - serf 4y ago
    I tend to feel the same way about F360 -- I'm productive in it -- but the increased amount of 'cloud credit' usage within the app is driving me away from the product faster and faster. It's mostly superficial stuff behind that right now, but I can see the writing on the walls. There's no real valid technical reason why I can't render a carousel rendering of a design locally, especially after I am already wrangled into a subscription fee for a product that would've been a one time (albeit large) purchase a few years back.
- TOGoS 4y ago
  I tried to use FreeCAD once because I needed to generate some G-code for my CNC router. I ultimately wrote my own G-code generator because that was less frustrating than memorizing the sequence of steps necessary to do anything in FreeCAD. It seemed like the answer to "how do I do X" was always "you can't do that; those two workbenches aren't compatible."
the_cat_kittles 4y ago
its janky as shit, but somehow strangely effective. you just have to overcome several months of frustration. i think its worth it because its open source and scriptable, you can always modify it to do exactly what you need
- regularfry 4y ago
  Or, indeed, years. I've been semi-seriously using it since 0.19 and one of the most frustrating things about it is how poor the affordances are. Going from idea to execution is often completely unpredictable in terms of what intermediate stages you need to go through, especially for things like the Curves workbench where you need to convert between different types of "line in space" representation for, as far as I can tell, no particularly user-relevant reason. While I'm ranting, the "workbench" abstraction might be very convenient technically, but it's implemented very arbitrarily. What conceptual set contains "Architecture", "Image", "Part", and "Robot"? And what's the conceptual dividing line between "Part" and "Part Design"? I understand the technical difference (in that "Part Design" should really be called "Body" because that's what it's for) but from a user's point of view learning which operations live where, and why there are (for instance) two different ways to do fillets with completely different user interfaces, just exposes them to technical implementation details they shouldn't have to care about. You often see the justification on the forums that "complex tools are always going to have complex interfaces" - no, that's a failure of UI design. Start by acknowledging that, and things can start to improve.
  - the_cat_kittles 4y ago
    totally agree. i feel the same way about blender and ardour, and i wonder if the ui layer is the biggest difference between open source and paid software of this type. ths reason being the ui is the first thing you notice so it probably influences sales the most
    - regularfry 4y ago
      Blender I have less of an issue with, mainly because they've demonstrated that they're not afraid to do fairly major UI upheavals to improve things. It's a lot better than it was pre-2.8.
peter-m80 4y ago
I learned the basics of FreeCad because I bought a 3D printer and wanted to do my own stuff. I had no previous experience with CAD programs I think the best approach is to learn by doing. Watch some YouTube video tutorials and copy step by step what the video shows. I went from 0 to "I can do that" in few sessions. The parametric design with constraints is ideal to build precise parts for printing. I really enjoy when I need to build something with it and I did not need to learn anything else.
- avaldez_ 4y ago
  My experience exactly. I wanted to make cases for my electronics projects and just learned following this series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXN7TOg3kj4&list=PLWuyJLVUNtc0UszswD0oD5q4VeWTrK7JC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXN7TOg3kj4&list=PLWuyJLVUNt...
  - kramerger 4y ago
    Don't forget https://m.youtube.com/@FreeCADAcademy https://m.youtube.com/@FreeCADAcademy and https://m.youtube.com/@learnfreecad8264 https://m.youtube.com/@learnfreecad8264 I used the second channel to learn parametric CAD and do my 10-20 first printed designs before I switched to OpenSCAD.
- alias_neo 4y ago
  I too have been using FreeCAD for 3D printing. It's generally been going ok, but it can be difficult to achieve some complex things, the learning curve is steep and it's easy to forget the little tricks when you don't do it often enough. Several times I'll find I've spent hours building something and then it breaks and I have to start again, because of the relationship between features/parts and it just becomes impossible to resolve. It makes me jealous when I watch YT channels with people using Fusion360 making things with intuitive ease in the UI, it just seems much more straight forward to get things done. For anything I'm likely to reuse or modify I've started learning SCAD, since I write software for a living, the learning curve isn't as high, but you still need to learn the little tricks for doing certain things more easily.
sgt 4y ago
Like a lot of folks I've spoken to, I've recently switched from Fusion360 to FreeCAD to gain more independence from a subscription model. I will know that I can always rely on this software no matter what, and no Internet connection needed etc. FreeCAD is pretty good, it's not as refined as Fusion but the functionality seems to be there. As others have already mentioned, it's hard to learn but you'll be doing yourself a favor if you watch those FreeCAD tutorials on YouTube, and maybe this User Book as well.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
sgt 4y ago
Is there an actual physical book for FreeCAD too on the market?
- app4soft 4y ago
  Here is a list of known FreeCAD books:[0] But all of them are a bit outdated as for actual FreeCAD 0.20.x/0.21.x and RealThunder's FreeCADLink. [0] https://wiki.freecad.org/Books https://wiki.freecad.org/Books
  - microtherion 4y ago
    In addition, there is the FreeCAD black book: https://cadcamcaeworks.com/product/freecad-0-20-black-book/ https://cadcamcaeworks.com/product/freecad-0-20-black-book/ Fairly up to date, covers considerably more ground than most other FreeCAD books I've encountered, and the authors seem to know a lot about various CAD systems. There are also numerous nontrivial tutorial examples worked out in considerable detail. As a downside, the book is somewhat pricy (very much so for the paper edition) and written in a very dry style, going through menu options one by one in a very formulaic language. I would recommend it, but it does not necessarily make for recreational reading.
    - app4soft 4y ago
      > and written in a very dry style That is why I'm not listing it here — it looks more like compilation from FreeCAD wiki docs & various guides. Author printed already tons of such books, and all of them looks like Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V.[0] [0] https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AGaurav+Verma&s=relevancerank&text=Gaurav+Verma&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1 https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AGaurav+Verma...
_def 4y ago
I'm always excited when FreeCAD comes up in some way here. I haven't learned any CAD software yet but I'm really eager to learn FreeCAD. It may be clunky in comparison to it's competitors now but I feel like it's worth putting some time into it. Reminds me a bit of learning basics of GIMP back then, which I've been using for many years now.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  You should try SolveSpace or just pirate SOLIDWORKS. Trying to learn CAD with FreeCAD will be an exercise in frustration. I experienced the same thing trying to learn PCB design with gEDA and Kicad. I gave up and only managed to learn years later when I discovered Designspark PCB. CAD and PCB design are not complicated at all. But these open source programs (except SolveSpace) have really terrible UX so you really need to already know what you're doing to use them.
  - app4soft 4y ago
    > You should try SolveSpace I may recommend use both SolveSpace & FreeCAD together[0]: 1) SolveSpace app for preliminary design & export to STEP-file; 2) FreeCAD app for final touches on this STEP-file (fillets, chamfers, etc.). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3LJMeqUDrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3LJMeqUDrU
    - nelsonic 4y ago
      Looks like a great pairing. Subscribed for more! :-)
  - kramerger 4y ago
    That was some really odd advice. I belive fusion 360 is free for personal use and much more popular than solidworks. Solvespace has a non existing UX. I would very much advise against using it. People have gone from zero to first commercial PCB in 1-2 weeks using kicad.
    - 4y ago
Slighted 4y ago
This is a good opportunity to bring up Blender. Its quite powerful as a full 3D suite and can be used for modeling in 3D printing.
- rcarmo 4y ago
  You also have the CAD Sketcher plug-in, which supports constraints.
  - app4soft 4y ago
    CAD Sketcher is based on SolveSpace's geometry constraints solver.
checkcircuits 4y ago
FreeCAD is great for the effort they put in. Unfortunately it's still very unpolished even for relatively simple work. You can tell they mean well but it's simply not designed by people who have used better tools regularly. For those of us that cannot deal with F3D being entirely in the cloud there is Alibre which comes at a reasonable price for CAD software. It's very well designed, buy once own forever, and you get a real professional tool. I hope FreeCAD one day beats the current offerings. But I found the tool to be unusable. The workflow is just so...bad. If you do find yourself making something usable in FreeCAD and want to upgrade to better tools almost nothing will transfer over. I've used Alibre for several years now and it functions almost exactly like Solidworks with some exceptions. Unfortunately, CAD is a space almost entirely dominated by commercial tools and will likely be for the foreseeable future. There's too many decades of collective experience brought to bear on these tools and it doesn't seem like something a really good software engineer can simply design their way into. You truly do need industry experience.
- amelius 4y ago
  Alibre looks great except that it only supports MS Windows ...
- wakeupcall 4y ago
  I've switched 100% my of my hobbist design work onto FreeCAD since last year. It's still kind of painful, but I didn't feel limited. I'm waiting for it to have his "blender" moment. It's still far behind, yes, and it still does tend to crap over geometry a little too much, however I don't have to deal with licensing BS, and by knowing python I can actually do way more than what I could do with other cad offerings. The potential is absolutely staggering there. For reference, I was mostly using onshape+f360 before for my personal work, but my experience includes inventor, solidedge, solidworks and creo. I work close to an HW team, but my employer is stingy to give cad licenses to anybody which doesn't strictly need it due to the outrageous costs these software costs for every single seat. This makes collaboration a ROYAL pain. So my workflow usually involves importing parts into freecad, reverse engineer them, and then send the actual modeled suggestion back to the HW team. I can work with a good 30% of the parts involved without too much trouble, which is pretty amazing in it's own regard, although it's usually not pretty. I really wanted to buy Alibre. I can afford the full "alibre design offline license" no problem. It's the only cad program I've seen that has decent pricing and decent licensing, but it doesn't work on linux. And I tried everything to make it work on wine. Hard pass. In a certain sense, I'm glad I've stuck with freecad recently, since I know every single design I do I will not have to fight with licensing or obsolete window incompatibilities later on. It's mine forever.
miniwark 4y ago
For a good CAD user book i find the one for QCAD very good for learning the basics of CAD drawing (and the Qcad software). This book is not free (35$), but it's available in multiple languages (english, french, german, italian). Even if you use another CAD software, its a good starting point. https://qcad.org/en/documentation/the-qcad-book https://qcad.org/en/documentation/the-qcad-book
- app4soft 4y ago
  As a free alternative to QCAD book, here are few books for LibreCAD. BTW, Its just for 2D/2.5D CAD (CADD), while for 3D CAx (CAM, CAE, FEM, etc.) you need a lot more knowledge. [0] https://librecad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://librecad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ [1] https://heikell.fi/downloads/LibCAD_220rc1.pdf https://heikell.fi/downloads/LibCAD_220rc1.pdf
rcarmo 4y ago
I’ve been trying to use FreeCAD for a while now and keep going back to OpenSCAD because, ironically, the FreeCAD UX feels grotesque (I used Fusion before, and have a history of 3D modeling that harks back to things like Caligari and Maya). OpenSCAD is great for a lot of the simple electronics enclosure stuff (once you master hulls), but does need better control over 2D extrusions and sorely lacks fillets and chamfers (which are essential for proper finishing of joints and outer edges). Those have been long-standing issues that haven’t been addressed by the core project (or, as far as I know, any forks), and kind of prevent me from going all in on it (although I do use it the most, and prefer writing out the geometry to drawing it). I have also been looking into the CAD Sketcher plug-in for Blender, which is somewhat unpolished but pretty decent for simple things, and may eventually move to that altogether—although Blender STL meshes usually need a lot of cleaning up.
- sprash 4y ago
  I used to like OpenSCAD for its simple approach but then I discovered SDF-based modelling with Python made possible with this neat library: [1]. This is perfect if you are a programmer that doesn't know anything about CAD-Software. 1.: https://github.com/fogleman/sdf https://github.com/fogleman/sdf
  - carterschonwald 4y ago
    Oh cool! I’ve wanted to use an sdf modeler for a while
  - rcarmo 4y ago
    That is a trifle CPU-intensive, though. Might work OK if you can get it to work with Jupyter, but seems slow for fast iterations and without an interactive view it's hard to model.
    - sprash 4y ago
      Agreed. The display in Jupyter should happen via some inline WebGL-shaders which would be instant rendering. Also the "marching qubes" algorithm to render the stl is not exactly state of the art (use at least octrees or something) and needs very high resolution to achieve good results.
zulualpha2 4y ago
You can also get hold of a bang up to date FreeCAD book here:https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad Unfortunately it sold out on release but is available for free download
kramerger 4y ago
Some people won't touch freecad because of the dated UI. But to me, the main problem with freecad was lack of good organisation among workbenches. Its just too much back and forth between half finished workbenches to get anything done.
- ur-whale 4y ago
  > Some people won't touch freecad because of the dated UI. Not just that. The UI is horrendous. There is, as you note, no logic to the "workbenches". The geometry engine (the "kernel", if you like CAD tongue) is ancient and weak. The parametric modeling system is not something I've ever managed to make work. The scripting language is - even though they use one of the best languages ever - hard and convoluted to use to build 3D models. Polygonal mesh modeling is close to non existent. NURBS modeling is weak. Getting complex fillet + hole working is a complete crapshoot. I could go on for a long time. I do understand it's free software and that there are very few alternative out there, but when you're used to open source stuff like Blender, OpenSCAD, Wings3D and Gimp, FreeCad is simply laughable. It pains me to say this: folks have been pouring their heart and soul into building FreeCad, but the result is just crap.
wittenbunk 4y ago
You can download a legit SOLIDWORKS license for free if you pay the $40 a year membership to EAA (experimental aircraft association)
- jdboyd 4y ago
  I believe that has been reduced to EAA members getting 50% off the SOLIDWORKS for Makers edition (normally $99/yr).
class3shock 4y ago
Slightly off topic but does anyone have a recommended paid alternative to FreeCAD? Preferably one that is non-subscription and sub 5k?
- jdboyd 4y ago
  Good luck with the non-subscription part these days.
  - class3shock 4y ago
    Yeah, Solidworks is the only big player that hasn't moved to that model yet (that I know). Makes it incredibly difficult for folks looking to do commercial work (that can't be done on student licenses) and who don't work at large companies.
krimpenrik 4y ago
Share the same experiences as here, don't care about the outdated UI, I spend a lot of time figuring out how to build my rather simpel model, but always had to relearn stuff to make modifications. Went over to onshape and works great for my use case (free version)

120 points by app4soft 4y ago

This is interesting. I recently downloaded FreeCAD and abandoned it after just a few minutes. So, I think I can understand where this project came from. I have experience with 2D CAD programs like LibreCAD and CadStd and 3D geometric tools like TinkerCAD, OpenSCAD, the late ABC 123, and Sketchup. But, FreeCAD doesn’t really seem to work like these tools. There seems to be a lot to learn and I just found myself frustrated. I did manage to create a general shape I was working on but I didn’t feel like I understood very well. Anyway, some simple primer for people without a drafting background may be in order (and I imagine that isn’t too hard to find). This primer also seems to be over my head, getting into language I don’t understand right off the bat. Seems like the author has a bit of background I lack.

steve918 4y ago
I've spent some time trying to learn FreeCAD and ultimately decided that the cost of Fusion 360 pays for itself several times over in productivity compared to trying to deal with how clunky and difficult FreeCAD is. Alternatively PCB stuff in Fusion is pretty horrible and IMO worse than Eagle was before they all but abandon it and started shoe honing it into Fusion. Meanwhile KiCad continues to get better and more feature rich.
- serf 4y ago
  I tend to feel the same way about F360 -- I'm productive in it -- but the increased amount of 'cloud credit' usage within the app is driving me away from the product faster and faster. It's mostly superficial stuff behind that right now, but I can see the writing on the walls. There's no real valid technical reason why I can't render a carousel rendering of a design locally, especially after I am already wrangled into a subscription fee for a product that would've been a one time (albeit large) purchase a few years back.
TOGoS 4y ago
I tried to use FreeCAD once because I needed to generate some G-code for my CNC router. I ultimately wrote my own G-code generator because that was less frustrating than memorizing the sequence of steps necessary to do anything in FreeCAD. It seemed like the answer to "how do I do X" was always "you can't do that; those two workbenches aren't compatible."

the_cat_kittles 4y ago

its janky as shit, but somehow strangely effective. you just have to overcome several months of frustration. i think its worth it because its open source and scriptable, you can always modify it to do exactly what you need

regularfry 4y ago
Or, indeed, years. I've been semi-seriously using it since 0.19 and one of the most frustrating things about it is how poor the affordances are. Going from idea to execution is often completely unpredictable in terms of what intermediate stages you need to go through, especially for things like the Curves workbench where you need to convert between different types of "line in space" representation for, as far as I can tell, no particularly user-relevant reason. While I'm ranting, the "workbench" abstraction might be very convenient technically, but it's implemented very arbitrarily. What conceptual set contains "Architecture", "Image", "Part", and "Robot"? And what's the conceptual dividing line between "Part" and "Part Design"? I understand the technical difference (in that "Part Design" should really be called "Body" because that's what it's for) but from a user's point of view learning which operations live where, and why there are (for instance) two different ways to do fillets with completely different user interfaces, just exposes them to technical implementation details they shouldn't have to care about. You often see the justification on the forums that "complex tools are always going to have complex interfaces" - no, that's a failure of UI design. Start by acknowledging that, and things can start to improve.
- the_cat_kittles 4y ago
  totally agree. i feel the same way about blender and ardour, and i wonder if the ui layer is the biggest difference between open source and paid software of this type. ths reason being the ui is the first thing you notice so it probably influences sales the most
  - regularfry 4y ago
    Blender I have less of an issue with, mainly because they've demonstrated that they're not afraid to do fairly major UI upheavals to improve things. It's a lot better than it was pre-2.8.

peter-m80 4y ago

I learned the basics of FreeCad because I bought a 3D printer and wanted to do my own stuff. I had no previous experience with CAD programs I think the best approach is to learn by doing. Watch some YouTube video tutorials and copy step by step what the video shows. I went from 0 to "I can do that" in few sessions. The parametric design with constraints is ideal to build precise parts for printing. I really enjoy when I need to build something with it and I did not need to learn anything else.

avaldez_ 4y ago
My experience exactly. I wanted to make cases for my electronics projects and just learned following this series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXN7TOg3kj4&list=PLWuyJLVUNtc0UszswD0oD5q4VeWTrK7JC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXN7TOg3kj4&list=PLWuyJLVUNt...
- kramerger 4y ago
  Don't forget https://m.youtube.com/@FreeCADAcademy https://m.youtube.com/@FreeCADAcademy and https://m.youtube.com/@learnfreecad8264 https://m.youtube.com/@learnfreecad8264 I used the second channel to learn parametric CAD and do my 10-20 first printed designs before I switched to OpenSCAD.
alias_neo 4y ago
I too have been using FreeCAD for 3D printing. It's generally been going ok, but it can be difficult to achieve some complex things, the learning curve is steep and it's easy to forget the little tricks when you don't do it often enough. Several times I'll find I've spent hours building something and then it breaks and I have to start again, because of the relationship between features/parts and it just becomes impossible to resolve. It makes me jealous when I watch YT channels with people using Fusion360 making things with intuitive ease in the UI, it just seems much more straight forward to get things done. For anything I'm likely to reuse or modify I've started learning SCAD, since I write software for a living, the learning curve isn't as high, but you still need to learn the little tricks for doing certain things more easily.

sgt 4y ago

Like a lot of folks I've spoken to, I've recently switched from Fusion360 to FreeCAD to gain more independence from a subscription model. I will know that I can always rely on this software no matter what, and no Internet connection needed etc. FreeCAD is pretty good, it's not as refined as Fusion but the functionality seems to be there. As others have already mentioned, it's hard to learn but you'll be doing yourself a favor if you watch those FreeCAD tutorials on YouTube, and maybe this User Book as well.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

sgt 4y ago

Is there an actual physical book for FreeCAD too on the market?

app4soft 4y ago
Here is a list of known FreeCAD books:[0] But all of them are a bit outdated as for actual FreeCAD 0.20.x/0.21.x and RealThunder's FreeCADLink. [0] https://wiki.freecad.org/Books https://wiki.freecad.org/Books
- microtherion 4y ago
  In addition, there is the FreeCAD black book: https://cadcamcaeworks.com/product/freecad-0-20-black-book/ https://cadcamcaeworks.com/product/freecad-0-20-black-book/ Fairly up to date, covers considerably more ground than most other FreeCAD books I've encountered, and the authors seem to know a lot about various CAD systems. There are also numerous nontrivial tutorial examples worked out in considerable detail. As a downside, the book is somewhat pricy (very much so for the paper edition) and written in a very dry style, going through menu options one by one in a very formulaic language. I would recommend it, but it does not necessarily make for recreational reading.
  - app4soft 4y ago
    > and written in a very dry style That is why I'm not listing it here — it looks more like compilation from FreeCAD wiki docs & various guides. Author printed already tons of such books, and all of them looks like Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V.[0] [0] https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AGaurav+Verma&s=relevancerank&text=Gaurav+Verma&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1 https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AGaurav+Verma...

_def 4y ago

I'm always excited when FreeCAD comes up in some way here. I haven't learned any CAD software yet but I'm really eager to learn FreeCAD. It may be clunky in comparison to it's competitors now but I feel like it's worth putting some time into it. Reminds me a bit of learning basics of GIMP back then, which I've been using for many years now.

IshKebab 4y ago
You should try SolveSpace or just pirate SOLIDWORKS. Trying to learn CAD with FreeCAD will be an exercise in frustration. I experienced the same thing trying to learn PCB design with gEDA and Kicad. I gave up and only managed to learn years later when I discovered Designspark PCB. CAD and PCB design are not complicated at all. But these open source programs (except SolveSpace) have really terrible UX so you really need to already know what you're doing to use them.
- app4soft 4y ago
  > You should try SolveSpace I may recommend use both SolveSpace & FreeCAD together[0]: 1) SolveSpace app for preliminary design & export to STEP-file; 2) FreeCAD app for final touches on this STEP-file (fillets, chamfers, etc.). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3LJMeqUDrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3LJMeqUDrU
  - nelsonic 4y ago
    Looks like a great pairing. Subscribed for more! :-)
- kramerger 4y ago
  That was some really odd advice. I belive fusion 360 is free for personal use and much more popular than solidworks. Solvespace has a non existing UX. I would very much advise against using it. People have gone from zero to first commercial PCB in 1-2 weeks using kicad.
  - 4y ago

Slighted 4y ago

This is a good opportunity to bring up Blender. Its quite powerful as a full 3D suite and can be used for modeling in 3D printing.

rcarmo 4y ago
You also have the CAD Sketcher plug-in, which supports constraints.
- app4soft 4y ago
  CAD Sketcher is based on SolveSpace's geometry constraints solver.

checkcircuits 4y ago

FreeCAD is great for the effort they put in. Unfortunately it's still very unpolished even for relatively simple work. You can tell they mean well but it's simply not designed by people who have used better tools regularly. For those of us that cannot deal with F3D being entirely in the cloud there is Alibre which comes at a reasonable price for CAD software. It's very well designed, buy once own forever, and you get a real professional tool. I hope FreeCAD one day beats the current offerings. But I found the tool to be unusable. The workflow is just so...bad. If you do find yourself making something usable in FreeCAD and want to upgrade to better tools almost nothing will transfer over. I've used Alibre for several years now and it functions almost exactly like Solidworks with some exceptions. Unfortunately, CAD is a space almost entirely dominated by commercial tools and will likely be for the foreseeable future. There's too many decades of collective experience brought to bear on these tools and it doesn't seem like something a really good software engineer can simply design their way into. You truly do need industry experience.

amelius 4y ago
Alibre looks great except that it only supports MS Windows ...
wakeupcall 4y ago
I've switched 100% my of my hobbist design work onto FreeCAD since last year. It's still kind of painful, but I didn't feel limited. I'm waiting for it to have his "blender" moment. It's still far behind, yes, and it still does tend to crap over geometry a little too much, however I don't have to deal with licensing BS, and by knowing python I can actually do way more than what I could do with other cad offerings. The potential is absolutely staggering there. For reference, I was mostly using onshape+f360 before for my personal work, but my experience includes inventor, solidedge, solidworks and creo. I work close to an HW team, but my employer is stingy to give cad licenses to anybody which doesn't strictly need it due to the outrageous costs these software costs for every single seat. This makes collaboration a ROYAL pain. So my workflow usually involves importing parts into freecad, reverse engineer them, and then send the actual modeled suggestion back to the HW team. I can work with a good 30% of the parts involved without too much trouble, which is pretty amazing in it's own regard, although it's usually not pretty. I really wanted to buy Alibre. I can afford the full "alibre design offline license" no problem. It's the only cad program I've seen that has decent pricing and decent licensing, but it doesn't work on linux. And I tried everything to make it work on wine. Hard pass. In a certain sense, I'm glad I've stuck with freecad recently, since I know every single design I do I will not have to fight with licensing or obsolete window incompatibilities later on. It's mine forever.

miniwark 4y ago

For a good CAD user book i find the one for QCAD very good for learning the basics of CAD drawing (and the Qcad software). This book is not free (35$), but it's available in multiple languages (english, french, german, italian). Even if you use another CAD software, its a good starting point. https://qcad.org/en/documentation/the-qcad-book https://qcad.org/en/documentation/the-qcad-book

app4soft 4y ago
As a free alternative to QCAD book, here are few books for LibreCAD. BTW, Its just for 2D/2.5D CAD (CADD), while for 3D CAx (CAM, CAE, FEM, etc.) you need a lot more knowledge. [0] https://librecad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://librecad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ [1] https://heikell.fi/downloads/LibCAD_220rc1.pdf https://heikell.fi/downloads/LibCAD_220rc1.pdf

rcarmo 4y ago

I’ve been trying to use FreeCAD for a while now and keep going back to OpenSCAD because, ironically, the FreeCAD UX feels grotesque (I used Fusion before, and have a history of 3D modeling that harks back to things like Caligari and Maya). OpenSCAD is great for a lot of the simple electronics enclosure stuff (once you master hulls), but does need better control over 2D extrusions and sorely lacks fillets and chamfers (which are essential for proper finishing of joints and outer edges). Those have been long-standing issues that haven’t been addressed by the core project (or, as far as I know, any forks), and kind of prevent me from going all in on it (although I do use it the most, and prefer writing out the geometry to drawing it). I have also been looking into the CAD Sketcher plug-in for Blender, which is somewhat unpolished but pretty decent for simple things, and may eventually move to that altogether—although Blender STL meshes usually need a lot of cleaning up.

sprash 4y ago
I used to like OpenSCAD for its simple approach but then I discovered SDF-based modelling with Python made possible with this neat library: [1]. This is perfect if you are a programmer that doesn't know anything about CAD-Software. 1.: https://github.com/fogleman/sdf https://github.com/fogleman/sdf
- carterschonwald 4y ago
  Oh cool! I’ve wanted to use an sdf modeler for a while
- rcarmo 4y ago
  That is a trifle CPU-intensive, though. Might work OK if you can get it to work with Jupyter, but seems slow for fast iterations and without an interactive view it's hard to model.
  - sprash 4y ago
    Agreed. The display in Jupyter should happen via some inline WebGL-shaders which would be instant rendering. Also the "marching qubes" algorithm to render the stl is not exactly state of the art (use at least octrees or something) and needs very high resolution to achieve good results.

zulualpha2 4y ago

You can also get hold of a bang up to date FreeCAD book here:https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad https://hackspace.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad Unfortunately it sold out on release but is available for free download

kramerger 4y ago

Some people won't touch freecad because of the dated UI. But to me, the main problem with freecad was lack of good organisation among workbenches. Its just too much back and forth between half finished workbenches to get anything done.

ur-whale 4y ago
> Some people won't touch freecad because of the dated UI. Not just that. The UI is horrendous. There is, as you note, no logic to the "workbenches". The geometry engine (the "kernel", if you like CAD tongue) is ancient and weak. The parametric modeling system is not something I've ever managed to make work. The scripting language is - even though they use one of the best languages ever - hard and convoluted to use to build 3D models. Polygonal mesh modeling is close to non existent. NURBS modeling is weak. Getting complex fillet + hole working is a complete crapshoot. I could go on for a long time. I do understand it's free software and that there are very few alternative out there, but when you're used to open source stuff like Blender, OpenSCAD, Wings3D and Gimp, FreeCad is simply laughable. It pains me to say this: folks have been pouring their heart and soul into building FreeCad, but the result is just crap.

wittenbunk 4y ago

You can download a legit SOLIDWORKS license for free if you pay the $40 a year membership to EAA (experimental aircraft association)

jdboyd 4y ago
I believe that has been reduced to EAA members getting 50% off the SOLIDWORKS for Makers edition (normally $99/yr).

class3shock 4y ago

Slightly off topic but does anyone have a recommended paid alternative to FreeCAD? Preferably one that is non-subscription and sub 5k?

jdboyd 4y ago
Good luck with the non-subscription part these days.
- class3shock 4y ago
  Yeah, Solidworks is the only big player that hasn't moved to that model yet (that I know). Makes it incredibly difficult for folks looking to do commercial work (that can't be done on student licenses) and who don't work at large companies.

krimpenrik 4y ago

Share the same experiences as here, don't care about the outdated UI, I spend a lot of time figuring out how to build my rather simpel model, but always had to relearn stuff to make modifications. Went over to onshape and works great for my use case (free version)