[kuratkull]

I'm a occasional hobbyist maker and i've used Autodesk Fusion, Solid Edge, OpenSCAD and other niche parametric programs, but always felt FreeCAD was too complex. But I really wanted it to work for me because it's FOSS and 100% offline. So with the new FreeCAD 1.1 RC I found an hour long tutorial and dove in. (1.1 is supposedly much easier to work with)

After doing the tut I can say that 1.1 is very nice, i can uninstall Fusion and Solid Edge finally :)

The guide i followed, no relation to it whatsoverer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxxDahY1U6E

[dracotomes]

I switched from Fusion to FreeCAD when I bid Windows goodbye (this video inspired me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEfNRST_3x8). Fusion does a LOT of stuff for you that FreeCAD doesn't - i.e. extrude a pad from two intersecting shapes in a sketch. While this is annoying at first I feel it forces me to design smarter. I've had a few crashes and the constraint solver sometimes seems to behave weird and takes a ctrl+z and a second attempt at the same action to properly add a constraint but overall my experience has been pretty positive.

[fainpul]

> extrude a pad from two intersecting shapes in a sketch

You can do that in FreeCAD 1.1. Select the sketch, enable "Make Internals" in the data tab. You can also enable it permanently in settings.

[elaus]

I too feel like the latest versions are quite a big improvement and I finally lost that feeling of slowing myself down just for the sake of using OSS.

But I still hope for a "blender moment" where a concerted effort gets rid of old cruft, improves UI/UX and jump-starts growth (also in developers/funding) and further improvements.

[dgroshev]

It's probably impossible for FreeCAD to catch up with the industry-standard CAD systems (SOLIDWORKS, NX, Fusion) unless they somehow pour a stupendous amount of money into their geometry kernel [1].

All major CAD systems use mature geometry kernels like Parasolid [2]. Parasolid was developed for 40 years and is still in active development. This is the piece of code that enables CAD systems to do things like computing an intersection of a G3 smooth fillet with embossed text, handling all corner cases.

FreeCAD runs on OpenCASCADE [3], which is both less sophisticated today and is slower to gain new features than Parasolid, being seemingly maintained by one person [4]. FreeCAD's geometry is hard limited by what OpenCASCADE can do.

This is the main difference from Blender. Blender ultimately operates on vertices, which doesn't require nearly the same level of inherent complexity. Blender isn't bottlenecked in what it can do like FreeCAD is.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasolid

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology

[4]: https://github.com/Open-Cascade-SAS/OCCT/commits/master/

[qiine]

I kinda wish blender could just do CAD honestly,

It feels like all those 3D modeling apps like 3DSmax,Fusion even Zbrush share like 90% of their feature set but your are forced to literally juggle(for videogame dev at least) because of one or two arguably extremely niche capability.

[JKCalhoun]

Yeah, I avoided Fusion (etc.) because of the usual bait-and-switch I've seen with commercial applications that claim to be "free" at some point. If I'm going to invest in learning a new application, I'd rather it be an open one.

I dove into FreeCAD with either version 1.0.0 or earlier. It was… rough.

To be sure, it was a whole new app so I expect initial navigation around the app to be challenging. But, wow.

Nonetheless, I did get a few things modeled up [1]. And for that I have to thank LLMs for steering me through using the app. I suggest others to try an LLM as a guide if you are learning (and I still am learning, of course). I like tutorials, but so often you can spend hours watching tutorials that cover all manner of ground where you simply want to complete a specific task—unable to find the tutorial covering how to do it.

Having said that though, I am eager to try this 1.0.2 version. (I'm also eager to fix a few minor MacOS-specific nits that I've already seen.)

[1] https://engineersneedart.com/blog/3dprinting2025/3dprinting2...

[MegaDeKay]

I've spent a decent amount of time on the FreeCAD Discord and more than one advanced user on there suggests treating FreeCAD like a rolling release. So I've been using the weekly FlatPack builds and have had a great experience. FreeCAD has been taking some big steps recently and by sticking with 1.0.0 / 1.0.2, you're basically missing out on almost a year's worth of improvements.

And the tutorial by Mango Jelly Solutions on YouTube are fantastic. They are generally very focused on one particular task per video so I think you'd find them really useful.

[dgroshev]

I find SOLIDWORKS for Makers [1] a great middle ground between bait-and-switch "free" Fusion and the real, very expensive, deal. SW is one of industry standards, its interface is much better than FreeCAD's, and it's more powerful than both FreeCAD and Fusion. For example, both FreeCAD and Fusion struggle with G2/G3 smoothness [2] where SW doesn't even blink. Fusion doesn't allow to pattern features on sketch points (it's gated behind an expensive add-on [3]) when it's a built-in feature in SW.

[1]: https://www.solidworks.com/solution/solidworks-makers

[2]: https://www.printables.com/model/1490911-g0-g3-corners-visua...

[3]: https://www.autodesk.com/uk/products/fusion-360/design-exten...

[criddell]

> If I'm going to invest in learning a new application, I'd rather it be an open one.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. The concepts are very transferrable.

At work I used to use SolidWorks exclusively, now I'm using Onshape and will probably switch to Inventor soon. At home I typically use Fusion 360. They all work more-or-less the same and moving between them isn't too hard.

[sakras]

Have you tried SolveSpace? It's easily my favorite open source CAD program. The main things it's missing are shells, fillets, and chamfers. But I've been able to 3D print quite a few parts using it!

[kilpikaarna]

You might want to check out Dune3D. It advertises itself as combining the constraint solver from SolveSpace with a OpenCASCADE geometry kernel supporting fillets and chamfers. :)

Haven't used it much apart from some minor tests (I tend to prefer MoI3D, but that's in a different category in several ways...), but as far as FOSS solid modelers it seems like the most promising to me. I do remember some small UI quirks, but overall it felt very approachable and streamlined, and looking at the GitHub repo, development is active. FreeCAD IMHO is just too sprawling and complex, with seemingly little tought paid to UI/UX.

[IshKebab]

Solvespace is nice, but missing fillets and chamfers is kind of a deal-breaker. Last time I tried it it also had issues with small holes turning into diamonds.

That said, pre-1.0 FreeCAD had a terrible UX so it was the best FOSS CAD option.

With the 1.0 release of FreeCAD the UX is much better though. There are still a few WTFs (e.g. it took me quite a while to figure out rollback is done via right-click->set tip, or something like that)... But overall it's better than Solvespace now.

[kuratkull]

Yeah I actually have. I really liked the concept, but I designed a cylinder with many holes (think a robust sieve) and it just crashed when the number of holes grew too great. Even the OpenCL/MP version. I felt it being unstable in other ways too so I did not make it my go to tool. Sadly it also seems it's not being developed much.

EDIT: Missing fillets and chamfers we're also a big problem for me - probably I'm just a newbie maker and want unreasonable things, but still.

[JKCalhoun]

Just checked it out [1] but it appears the last version released was in 2022? Makes me wonder if it is still active.

[1] https://solvespace.com/index.pl

[GorbachevyChase]

FreeCAD is one of those programs that I want to like and I’m rooting for, but for modeling outside of work I’m a much bigger fan of plasticity and blender. I’m hopeful now that language models are so good at software development that we can get a fork of freeCAD with a focus on ease of use.

Unrelated to part modeling, I would love to have a browser based roadway design tool that is domain-first, CAD second. Autodesk and Bentley are trying to be less bad, but their solutions create an extremely high administrative burden and unreasonable costs. Oh, if I just have someone working full-time for a month preparing files to be federated on your cloud platform I can finally get clash detection? I mean, shouldn’t that be table stakes for the software you are already being asked to buy over again every single year?

[fainpul]

Blender is a great piece of software, but it's a mesh editor (and many other things). It will never be a CAD tool and no add-on will change that.

Plasticity looks great, but it focuses on visual modeling instead of constraint based modeling. It's not a general purpose CAD tool.

[mijoharas]

For me, as a beginner in Freecad and 3d modelling I kept being unable to interpret/remember all the tool icons, and remember the shortcuts while learning.

I found this command palette that helped me discover the different commands and actually get to (beginner) proficient.[0].

Again, no relation, but it's what made it stick for me after a few aborted learning attempts. (and I had a lot of fun with freecad! Especially by my second or third model where I could actually just sit down and start modelling without having to learn any extra things. Now I just need an excuse to find something else to model...)

[0] https://github.com/ddfisher/FreeCAD-CommandPalette

[snapetom]

Similar experience. I tried to learn FreeCAD a while ago. People recommended Mango Jelly's tutorials. I used those among others and dove in. However, it was a pretty frustrating experience. Things never worked quite right. I would drill into a certain point and then realized you couldn't get there from here, and had to start over.

I recently had a desperate need to 3D print a part and tried FreeCAD again. A couple of things changed: 1) 1.1 came out and 2) Mango Jelly created a playlist that essentially was "bare bones what you need to know to get started." It was slightly over an hour of the fundamentals of navigating and just enough tools.

I think FreeCAD was basically just way too buggy initially, especially on macOS. Things never worked like tutorials said, or even dot updates sometimes broke what was being taught in tutorials. Also, while great, MJ's other previous videos deep dove into specific tools. Over half of any particular video would discuss features that helped you become an expert, but overwhelming when it came to getting up and running.

Since then, I've felt much more confident about FreeCAD and have used it to knock out other pieces.

[kuratkull]

Yeah the tutorial I linked was from Mango Jelly for FreeCAD 1.1 :) He seems to have a perfect balance of getting it done, and you understanding what you are doing.

[MegaDeKay]

I've been treating FreeCAD like a rolling release by using the weekly Flatpack builds and it has been a pretty good experience so far. Based on a good model I was given as a starting point and a lot of Mango Jelly Solutions videos, I've developed a detailed model of the Virtual Pinball machine I'm building now. It has been huge in saving me from countless mistakes in the actual build.

https://github.com/dekay/vpin-cabinet/

[mickeyp]

I can never leave Solid Edge. Synchronous editing is simply the best for 3d printing and fast iteration when you're experimenting with designs.

[kuratkull]

Yeah I still consider Solid Edge very good. Easy to work with, does not require internet, no stupid limitations (like the 10 model limitation for Fusion). Many tutorials, etc. But still, they might revoke their free license at any moment and I am out of a tool, and wasted experience.

[sho_hn]

I think Dune 3D making constraints available in 3D space is not quite the same, but at least a bit adjacent.

[cucumber3732842]

This. 1.0 and 1.1 are monumental improvements over the decades of releases that came before.

I struggled through the earlier releases and now I use OnShape because I can seamlessly switch between work and personal computers. If I ever can drop that requirement I'd love to go back to FreeCAD now that it's "good".

[ezst]

I got to use SolidWorks, Catia, Inventor before having my hands on pre-1.0 versions of FreeCAD. I never really understood the argument that it's too complex. The UI may be what it is (and admittedly full of shortcomings), but I found FreeCAD to be very conventional in the sense that you build out of sketches, define constraints that are identical from every other tool, compose those through extrusions, revolutions, etc.

The fact that it crashed on me for everything and nothing all at once seemed a bigger problem than "complexity".

[snug]

I've also dove into all of those, and have mostly stuck to OpenSCAD now. I'm not amazing at it, but I've been able to get a few things done that I needed for 3D printing. What has really made much better at OpenSCAD is ClaudeCode or Antigravity in VSCode, with BSOL2 library. The documentation is just bad enough that it takes me forever to figure out on my own, but just good enough with lots of examples out there that an LLM can get mostly what I want with little fuss.

[calpaterson]

Yeah I have been able to use it as a complete novice with CAD, albeit making planning out quite simple household things.

I feel like most of the opinions about FreeCAD online are out of date, since at least 1.0 if not later.

I mainly use it for planning things to make out of wood or print out of plastic.

[the__alchemist]

I want to like FreeCad, or FOSS CAD. For example: KiCAD and Blender are exquisite Free/OSS software I'm proud to use. For [non-EDA] CAD, I use SolidWorks, as I find FreeCAD (and OpenSCAD) is not in the same quality and user-experience tier.

[mhb]

OnShape?