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As someone who has been using FreeCAD starting in 2020, I can't tell any major differences. The problems are the same they have ever been. It's only the rendere

As someone who has been using FreeCAD starting in 2020, I can't tell any major differences. The problems are the same they have ever been. It's only the renderer that got a little bit more "sexy", but that is just looks.

arcanemachiner 11mo ago
This is my understanding as well.
- exasperaited 11mo ago
  It's incorrect, then! Lots changed since 2020 in the current 1.0.2 release, including TNP mitigations and the core assembly workbench. The 1.1 developer release (which is stable and useful and getting quite close to final release) contains further TNP mitigations; further improvements to the core assembly workbench; radically better lighting; datums have moved into the core; there's a way of enabling the advanced attachment mode in Part Design; compound body support in Part Design by default; significant comfort improvements in Sketcher, transparent previews, dragger gadgets and improved pattern tools in Part Design; support for external intersection geometry, Qt6 GUI improvements; lots of improvements to the Preferences panels, and that's before looking at FEM, BIM and CAM. Oh and the Ondsel stuff — the web sharing service, its plugin and its headless worker support — is also under the control of the FreeCAD project, free of its AWS dependencies and being actively maintained. It's still idiosyncratic but it goes way, way beyond looks. There was a big hump to get over between 0.21 and 1.0, re-engineering RealThunder's TNP mitigations to be more practical and adding the core Assembly workbench, but there's been enormous progress since. HN's negativity around FreeCAD no longer astonishes me because I think HNers in general have a rather misbegotten sense of what GUI CAD even is, what its strengths are instead of just its weaknesses, and how much of a challenge something with FreeCAD's scope really is. I mean Dune3D is interesting but frustrating still, SALOME is interesting but has huge money behind it; FreeCAD is the sort of hard-won, low-governance, pure-open-source-no-corporate-bullshit project HNers should prefer. Is it the equal of commercial CAD packages? No it's not. It's a different beast and an absolute social good.
  - mft_ 11mo ago
    I agree with this. Per my comment just above, I've been one of the HNers recommending against FreeCAD for years, because that was my experience. I've recently started to change that opinion; using the build I linked above, it's now pretty usable and competitive/usable for a hobbyist. I'm now considering it my first-line CAD package (until proven otherwise!)
    - fragmede 11mo ago
      Hm, I may have to reconsider the amoral recommendation of pirate SOLIDWORKS
      - exasperaited 11mo ago
        (Un-)release notes for upcoming 1.1: https://wiki.freecad.org/Release_notes_1.1 https://wiki.freecad.org/Release_notes_1.1
  - naasking 11mo ago
    TNP is much better, but not entirely solved. There are also still lots of minor issues that crop up during normal workflows, particularly when importing geometry from other sketches. I ran into this exact issue just this past week, where importing a half circle from a previous sketch breaks every time I update a dimension in DynamicData (a dimension that isn't used even), but if I manually select "recompute object" it recalculates everything totally fine. Then I tweak a dimension, model flags an error, I select "recompute object" and it's fine. No geometry errors detected at any point. Presumably FreeCAD is recomputing the object when I'm updating the dimensions, so why does a manual recomputation fix the problem but the automatic one doesn't? Overall FreeCAD is pretty good, but I have yet to do a FreeCAD project where I don't run into something weird like this that I have to suffer through or work around.
    - exasperaited 11mo ago
      TNP essentially cannot be definitively solved, as I understand it. Only extensively mitigated. Other CAD packages still have TNP issues. FreeCAD had an additional problem that OpenCascade doesn't maintain any naming across its interfaces at all, which is what RealThunder's geometry naming scheme, that mainline FreeCAD now uses, largely solved. But his fork still has issues too. Is DynamicData still properly supported in 1.x? Looks like it might be. Never really used it; I use a minimal mix of Spreadsheet (mostly for Configuration Tables) and VarSets. As to problems: the main issue with FreeCAD as with all really complex packages is that it's impossible to diagnose a problem from a description that short; you pretty much always need the file to know what is actually causing the problem, because it's full of subtleties.
mft_ 11mo ago
I'm self-taught with CAD, and have repeatedly tried and discarded FreeCAD for several years. (Tangent: perceived absence of a decent CAD solution in Linux is one of very few things keeping me using Windows.) I recently happened upon a video which mostly changed my mind [0], in which someone successfully passed a Solidworks professional certification using FreeCAD. And to my eyes, their workflow was only rarely any worse than e.g. Fusion360, Solidworks, etc. I've since been trialling FreeCAd via the 'bleeding edge' weekly development builds [1]... and it's not perfect, and it's a touch clunky in certain areas, but it's now more than usable. (In some areas, it's actually better than the competition I've tried, IMO - for example making and cutting threads.) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEfNRST_3x8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEfNRST_3x8 [1] https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases
- exasperaited 11mo ago
  That is an interesting and important video, and I think it helps make the point that "commercial" CAD is often viewed through rather rose-tinted spectacles because FreeCAD's GUI has been unfriendly and obstinate. Beginner friendliness simply hasn't been on their radar until this point, because it would have been pointless to focus on it until TNP was mitigated to the level it now is. I don't think FreeCAD is perfect, but I do think it's remarkable we have it at all.
- masterj 11mo ago
  Thank you for this link! I've been wondering if it is possible these days to replace Fusion for my workflow, and this is exactly what I need to see
- exasperaited 11mo ago
  1.1 RC1: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases/tag/1.1rc1 https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases/tag/1.1rc1

arcanemachiner 11mo ago

This is my understanding as well.

exasperaited 11mo ago
It's incorrect, then! Lots changed since 2020 in the current 1.0.2 release, including TNP mitigations and the core assembly workbench. The 1.1 developer release (which is stable and useful and getting quite close to final release) contains further TNP mitigations; further improvements to the core assembly workbench; radically better lighting; datums have moved into the core; there's a way of enabling the advanced attachment mode in Part Design; compound body support in Part Design by default; significant comfort improvements in Sketcher, transparent previews, dragger gadgets and improved pattern tools in Part Design; support for external intersection geometry, Qt6 GUI improvements; lots of improvements to the Preferences panels, and that's before looking at FEM, BIM and CAM. Oh and the Ondsel stuff — the web sharing service, its plugin and its headless worker support — is also under the control of the FreeCAD project, free of its AWS dependencies and being actively maintained. It's still idiosyncratic but it goes way, way beyond looks. There was a big hump to get over between 0.21 and 1.0, re-engineering RealThunder's TNP mitigations to be more practical and adding the core Assembly workbench, but there's been enormous progress since. HN's negativity around FreeCAD no longer astonishes me because I think HNers in general have a rather misbegotten sense of what GUI CAD even is, what its strengths are instead of just its weaknesses, and how much of a challenge something with FreeCAD's scope really is. I mean Dune3D is interesting but frustrating still, SALOME is interesting but has huge money behind it; FreeCAD is the sort of hard-won, low-governance, pure-open-source-no-corporate-bullshit project HNers should prefer. Is it the equal of commercial CAD packages? No it's not. It's a different beast and an absolute social good.
- mft_ 11mo ago
  I agree with this. Per my comment just above, I've been one of the HNers recommending against FreeCAD for years, because that was my experience. I've recently started to change that opinion; using the build I linked above, it's now pretty usable and competitive/usable for a hobbyist. I'm now considering it my first-line CAD package (until proven otherwise!)
  - fragmede 11mo ago
    Hm, I may have to reconsider the amoral recommendation of pirate SOLIDWORKS
    - exasperaited 11mo ago
      (Un-)release notes for upcoming 1.1: https://wiki.freecad.org/Release_notes_1.1 https://wiki.freecad.org/Release_notes_1.1
- naasking 11mo ago
  TNP is much better, but not entirely solved. There are also still lots of minor issues that crop up during normal workflows, particularly when importing geometry from other sketches. I ran into this exact issue just this past week, where importing a half circle from a previous sketch breaks every time I update a dimension in DynamicData (a dimension that isn't used even), but if I manually select "recompute object" it recalculates everything totally fine. Then I tweak a dimension, model flags an error, I select "recompute object" and it's fine. No geometry errors detected at any point. Presumably FreeCAD is recomputing the object when I'm updating the dimensions, so why does a manual recomputation fix the problem but the automatic one doesn't? Overall FreeCAD is pretty good, but I have yet to do a FreeCAD project where I don't run into something weird like this that I have to suffer through or work around.
  - exasperaited 11mo ago
    TNP essentially cannot be definitively solved, as I understand it. Only extensively mitigated. Other CAD packages still have TNP issues. FreeCAD had an additional problem that OpenCascade doesn't maintain any naming across its interfaces at all, which is what RealThunder's geometry naming scheme, that mainline FreeCAD now uses, largely solved. But his fork still has issues too. Is DynamicData still properly supported in 1.x? Looks like it might be. Never really used it; I use a minimal mix of Spreadsheet (mostly for Configuration Tables) and VarSets. As to problems: the main issue with FreeCAD as with all really complex packages is that it's impossible to diagnose a problem from a description that short; you pretty much always need the file to know what is actually causing the problem, because it's full of subtleties.

mft_ 11mo ago

I'm self-taught with CAD, and have repeatedly tried and discarded FreeCAD for several years. (Tangent: perceived absence of a decent CAD solution in Linux is one of very few things keeping me using Windows.) I recently happened upon a video which mostly changed my mind [0], in which someone successfully passed a Solidworks professional certification using FreeCAD. And to my eyes, their workflow was only rarely any worse than e.g. Fusion360, Solidworks, etc. I've since been trialling FreeCAd via the 'bleeding edge' weekly development builds [1]... and it's not perfect, and it's a touch clunky in certain areas, but it's now more than usable. (In some areas, it's actually better than the competition I've tried, IMO - for example making and cutting threads.) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEfNRST_3x8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEfNRST_3x8 [1] https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases

exasperaited 11mo ago
That is an interesting and important video, and I think it helps make the point that "commercial" CAD is often viewed through rather rose-tinted spectacles because FreeCAD's GUI has been unfriendly and obstinate. Beginner friendliness simply hasn't been on their radar until this point, because it would have been pointless to focus on it until TNP was mitigated to the level it now is. I don't think FreeCAD is perfect, but I do think it's remarkable we have it at all.
masterj 11mo ago
Thank you for this link! I've been wondering if it is possible these days to replace Fusion for my workflow, and this is exactly what I need to see
exasperaited 11mo ago
1.1 RC1: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases/tag/1.1rc1 https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases/tag/1.1rc1