[1220512064]

IDK how they compare to professional CAD tools, but I've heard good things about FreeCAD and OpenSCAD. I know that some people use Blender for CAD work, and there are even some extensions to make it easier, but I'm dubious that the representation of meshes that Blender uses are well-suited for CAD applications.

[al_borland]

I just tried FreeCAD last week. I uninstalled it after about 10 minutes. The most basic actions to just get started were throwing errors. Maybe it was user error, but it was a very bad first impression.

[fxff]

Approached it with the same attitude at the same time, after 10 minutes decided to view some basic tutorial (for an earlier release) that made things clear and I could continue basic tinkering on my own.

But of course built-in intro of Solidworks was a way better UX.

[sinker]

Sorry about the bad experience. If you decide to give it another try, it's worth spending a few hours on some intro tutorials first. I recommend MangoJelly on youtube.

FC is not a program you can just open and start using, especially if you have zero experience with parametric modeling.

If you're serious about design, modeling, engineering, etc., and want to own your own data, it's worth investing the hours to learn it starting from the very basics.

[mitthrowaway2]

Do you mind sharing what you were trying to do? I love FreeCAD so I'd be happy to help you do it if you'd be willing to give it a second try.

[mclau153]

if you try OnShape you will probably be much better off

[Fabricio20]

I tried FreeCAD and the user interface is so unintuitive and things just have constraints that block you from doing the most basic things from the get-go that I just gave up in 10m, like sibling. SCAD is scripted/programmer CAD, I like the concept and have used for a few things but it's quite a learning curve to do anything more than a cube with some funny edges! Dune3D is currently my go-to for 3d-printer related parts!

[entrox]

FreeCAD is definitely not something you can just pick up, but it's pretty intuitive if you're coming from CATIA as the workflow is very similar.

[nirvdrum]

Have you tried since the 1.0 release? There were quite a few improvements that were locked behind weekly builds for a long time. AstoCAD[1] might be another option for you. It's basically FreeCAD with a streamlined UI.

[1] -- https://www.astocad.com/

[MattRix]

OpenSCAD is great, I’ve made some very complex stuff in it that would be hard to make even in professional tools like Fusion. For some reason the main OpenSCAD releases don’t seem to get updated (the current version on the site is 2021.x). The nightly builds are great though, and I recommend getting one and turning on the Manifold backend since it is MUCH faster than the default CGAL one.

[WillAdams]

There is also:

https://pythonscad.org/

[the__alchemist]

I will phrase my response in an alternative form which, I mean not in a flippant way, but because I think it will clarify this, in complement to the other replies:

> Mom, may we have SolidWorks?

> We have SolidWorks at Home.

> <SolidWorks at Home>

This is in contrasti to the example the parent comment brought up, and the one I added: Blender and KiCad do not have this concern; there are free (Or you could say inexpensive) high quality tools in their spaces. This is notably not the case for traditional CAD.