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FreeCAD has improved immensely over the past 2-3 years in terms of stability and features. A decade ago it was not uncommon for me to experience crashes from it
by slabity 2y ago
FreeCAD has improved immensely over the past 2-3 years in terms of stability and features. A decade ago it was not uncommon for me to experience crashes from it randomly losing its GLX context or the constraint solver segfaulting for some reason. Now it's rare for it to crash at all for me, though I still run into a lot of constraint solver errors that are a pain to deal with.
However, despite the recent improvements, I still cannot recommend it for new users compared to commercial solutions for the sole reason of the Topological Naming Issues: https://wiki.freecad.org/Topological_naming_problem https://wiki.freecad.org/Topological_naming_problem
This issue has been probably the #1 problem I've had with FreeCAD since I started using it. And though I've learned how to design parts to get around the problem in most situations, it's a huge hurdle for newcomers to understand and get around. Luckily there's a fork that fixes a significant number of the issues: https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3 https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3 and https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD
I've also heard of Ondsel, which is supposedly a much more user friendly version of FreeCAD that also includes some fixes to the issue: https://ondsel.com/ https://ondsel.com/
EDIT: Here's actually a better read of the topological naming issue, what's being done about it, and why it's difficult to fix: https://ondsel.com/blog/freecad-topological-naming/ https://ondsel.com/blog/freecad-topological-naming/
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoTopological naming problem is fixed in RealThunder's Link Branch of FreeCAD: https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD/releases https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD/releases I highly recommend Link Branch, it's full of all sorts of usability improvements. The fix is still being worked on for the next mainstream FreeCAD release.
- mlhpdx 2y agoNaming and matching is never done. That said, you’ve got me curious enough to go have a look. Thanks!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ecjhdnc2025 2y agoBullet points of caution: - Realthunder’s branch contains unique, forked changes that will cause file incompatibility with core freecad if you use them unknowingly - Core freecad is ahead in many, many ways and improving quickly - the Realthunder branch is likely a dead end The TNP mitigation from the Realthunder branch is very close to being enabled in 0.22, and the feature freeze for 1.0 is weeks away. 1.0 is currently targeted for early August. My feeling is that it would be much better to learn what the topological naming problem is, and how it can be worked around, and then use Ondsel 2024.2 or a 0.22 weekly release until the TNP mitigation is mainstream. (It’s likely to be in 0.22 very soon indeed) My thinking is straightforward: there are and will be more tutorials and more support for this route, and learning about how to mitigate TNP is not wasted info: it will teach you useful skills for making generally robust designs, TNP or not. Among others, Mango Jelly Solutions has a recent video about TNP, and Brodie Fairhall’s video on the topic is worth seeing.
- jackyinger 2y agoFWIW I’ve encountered topological naming problems with OnShape. Edit: And they don’t stop me from enjoying using it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thebeardisred 2y agoAnd here's a video of the proposed fix for the toponaming problem (which has been merged upstream) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvRpOzig6D4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvRpOzig6D4
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoThis should be frontpage news
- zihotki 2y agoThe fore-coming v1 release with the fix will for sure be on the front page
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoI hope the documentation is updated.
- ecjhdnc2025 2y agoAs mentioned elsewhere earlier [0] essentially all of Ondsel’s user-friendliness is actually core 0.22 (development release) FreeCAD and different addon choices (like the tab bar). Which is not to say that Ondsel 2024.2 is a bad way to experience those things, or that the Ondsel Lens (cloud collaboration suite) is not interesting, because it surely is. It’s just to say it is only much more user-friendly if you’re not already using the 0.22 dev releases (that are considered to be generally as stable as 0.21 and are in wide use) (I upvoted you for the rest: I too am waiting for the TNP mitigations before I recommend it to less technically-focussed people) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40430893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40430893
- tadfisher 2y agoFix was merged into mainline FreeCAD yesterday: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/8432#issuecomment-2121349967 https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/8432#issuecomment-...
- slabity 2y agoWow, that's some convenient timing. That makes pretty much the sole reason I wouldn't recommend FreeCAD irrelevant.
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoHow to try it? Or wait till v1?
- rcarmo 2y agoThe UX is still horrible, though. SolveSpace manages to be a lot more usable with an utterly minimalist interface.
- rurban 2y agoEsp. the constraint solver is much better in SolveSpace. Even better than Solidworks