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 :)
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.
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.
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!
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.
Agreed: The Dune3D developers made the wise decision to start from scratch implementing a parametric modeling UI. Extremely robust software; very fast, and almost intuitive (high praise for CAD).
The problem with FreeCAD, on the other hand, is that it's a "just two more weeks and it'll be great" solution.
The developers are clearly talented in a raw-math kind of way, but FreeCAD offers the eternal promise of usability in the next release; while never delivering it.
Those who are profoundly cynical might consider the possibility that the legacy CAD industry has infiltrated the FreeCAD development team and run Pied-Piper ops there to prevent a Blender-moment stealing their revenue.
This would perfectly explain why the FreeCAD experience is so consistently bizarre.
>Those who are profoundly cynical might consider the possibility that the legacy CAD industry has infiltrated the FreeCAD development team and run Pied-Piper ops there to prevent a Blender-moment stealing their revenue.
If you've been around on the FreeCAD forums, you'll see that the majority of users essentially believe that all comparisons of FreeCAD with commercial CAD software is illegitimate and become incredibly defensive. They have developed a huge arsenal of coping strategies to avoid improving FreeCAD and the results speak for themselves.
It's like they've got the Steve Jobs attitude but without the good taste that justified it.
>They have developed a huge arsenal of coping strategies to avoid improving FreeCAD and the results speak for themselves.
Exactly. These FreeCAD "strategies" you mention align themselves perfectly with the objectives of the legacy CAD industry: To delay; break; and obfuscate opensource CAD.
In other words: The FreeCAD team may not be infiltrated by the legacy-CAD industry, but its behavior is entirely consistent with such a state.
One solution is to fork the behemoth; but if FreeCAD is a hedge-maze-by-design, the only way to win is not to play the game: Build alternatives elsewhere, from scratch.
FreeCAD feels like a time-drainer honeypot. Though whether by accident, or malice, is unknown.
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.
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.
FreeCAD is now in the same ballpark of capability and usability as Solidworks. It can still be a bit clunky and frustrating sometimes, but then so can most CAD programs, in their own ways.
Side note: the creator of the video above also has a video on optimising the FreeCAD interface. (There are some frustrations related to the interface generally, and this would seem to be a low hanging fruit for the FreeCAD team to address.)
I feel CAD is one area where open source does not shine. The problem space is too complex, and the UIs demand continuous, thoughtful development driven from customer demands rather than developers scratching their own itches.
Not least there are free (as in beer) solutions available, like fusion 360, that are enormously capable.
Theres certainly a place for open source, and openscad would be a great tool to reach for for procedurally generated models. But in all honesty, Freecad doesn't compare well to the professional tools in this space - not in the way that say, gimp does to its commercial competitors.
> the UIs demand continuous, thoughtful development
The current AutoCAD GUI is essentially unchanged from the 80s, so this shouldn't really be much of an issue. They added a ribbon probably 15 years ago at this point, but I can't think of any other major/recent changes. (But maybe there are some changes that I'm not familiar with, since I don't use AutoCAD very often and only started using it relatively recently)
Because... You can copy the UI of the leader and problem solved.
There you have GIMP with an absolute nightmare UI to use, but people keep saying, just get used to it. On the other hand, a single developer, in javascript, made a copy of photoshop, and most people I know prefer to use that over GIMP...
Just copy the UI that works, if you can't research your own UI.
Why do you think GIMP is a nightmare? I don’t find it problematic at all. The only issue I’m hitting once in a while is that I click on a button on the toolbar, and I guess I hit its edge, as I doesn’t switch modes. Other than that, I don’t have any complaints at all. What are yours?
I don’t know, I tried FreeCAD a few months ago and it was buggy as hell. I did some really basic extrusions and distance constraints. But ended up with non-perpendicular entities despite not constructing it like this.
I will try the newer version again. Last I tried 2 years or so back, it was crashing for me.
Personal Context: I am a civil enginer, and our requirement from CAD softwares are a lot simpler than Mechanical Engineering. Here on HN, whenever I see people discussing CAD, its the mechanical version of parts and 3d printing.
Shameless Plug:
I have decided to try building my own! Over a long enough timeline, it is doable, including the UI/UX part.
I used it once or twice to open an existing .step file just to know if I was exporting it correctly from KiCad.
Speaking of KiCad, I am convincing lots of people to move from EAGLE to it now that EAGLE is about to be killed by AutoDesk, and everyone seem to be having a good time.
I am hoping FreeCAD can become good to the point I can convince people to move to it too.
KiCad is frustrating because it’s actually good enough to make a lot of models but it’s just unfriendly enough to make it take way too long to do… but it’s also still way easier than learning how to do it in a full-featured cad program.
I would kill for something like KiCad with more refined controls.
I can second Horizon EDA. It's not perfect, but it has the good KiCAD kernel without the abysmal UX.
FreeCAD may also be good - it's the only other one I haven't tried.
On the other hand if you're convincing EAGLE users to move they'll probably be happy with KiCAD because they're already used to an even worse UX, as if such a thing were possible.
I only used it for some hobby modeling, but I have to say it's fantastic and very impressive.
It seems like it's fully community-maintained, there is no big company or foundation behind it. Honestly it's hard to believe!
There was just one major problem, the infamous "topological naming problem" which caused issues downstream is you edited a non-leaf node. That was pretty frustrating to deal with, but in later releases they fixed it I think. (Have not tried it since because I didn't have anything to model)
The solution for Topological Naming Problem (TNP) was merged just before the 1.0 release. A lot of other significant changes were also merged in at the same time. Some people have reported that the UX has improved a lot since then.
I don't know much about the internal architecture of FreeCAD. As far as I know, FreeCAD does a lot of heavy lifting including managing TNP. It's supposed to be handled by the CAD kernel - OpenCASCADE in this case. I suspect that the reason why open source CAD lags behind their proprietary counterparts is really the CAD kernel. Many proprietary CAD software share the same kernel, in fact. For example, SolidWorks, Solid Edge and OnShape use Parasolid. It tells you how critical the kernel is.
Perhaps we should be focusing more on a more capable open source CAD kernel. There are a few projects around that are trying this. But they either have very limited scopes, or don't have enough support and momentum.
I’ve really enjoyed Shapr3D (built on Parasolid). Nothing particularly better than the usual competitors but the interface is really intuitive and you can realistically develop on an iPad. Curious if anyone else has had experiences with it.
A very powerful feature of FreeCAD is its Python console. It is very useful when debugging software that uses/produces 3D solids. With it I was able to:
Yep. I am doing all my CAD work with build123d. I think it is much more capable than OpenSCAD due to BREP and Python. A shame that it is still relatively unknown.
In a space that's being taken over by cloud shit where you have no privacy, FreeCAD is one of the last good CAD engineering tools left, let alone being FOSS.
I really want to support open-source CAD, but it's so hard to take FreeCAD seriously. It reminds me of POV-Ray, which was (and still is) a parametric raytracer. An impressive feat of engineering completely derailed by the choice of a "UI" paradigm that made the simplest things unreasonably hard.
Designing 3D parts is hard enough, and while parametric modeling has uses... come on.
Parametric modelling is not the cause of the bad UI in FreeCAD, Fusion 360, Onshape, etc are also parametric. No, the main problems (last I tried it around 1.0) were that it had a clunky UI and that it was buggy. It would refuse to chamfer or bevel edges for no apparent reason that other CAD software wouldn't have issues with. There were occasionally crashes. Editing previous steps would destroy the later steps much more often than in other CAD software. Etc.
I would love to go back to FreeCAD, but for now I'm using Onshape (I run Linux, so Fusion isn't an option).
FreeCAD relies on OpenCascade kernel to actually deal with the models, and yes, there's still room for improvement..
As I understand it, there are no other open source alternatives around. On the commercial side there are some, perhaps the foremost being the venerable Parasolid, which is used by Onshape, Solid Edge, Solid Works, Siemens NX, Shapr 3d and others.
Creating a solid 3d kernel is hard. Parasolid is from 1986.
The last thing FreeCAD needs is AI integration. LLM contributions to the project have been of poor quality so far (just like most LLM contributions to FOSS)
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
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.
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.
The problem with FreeCAD, on the other hand, is that it's a "just two more weeks and it'll be great" solution.
The developers are clearly talented in a raw-math kind of way, but FreeCAD offers the eternal promise of usability in the next release; while never delivering it.
Those who are profoundly cynical might consider the possibility that the legacy CAD industry has infiltrated the FreeCAD development team and run Pied-Piper ops there to prevent a Blender-moment stealing their revenue.
This would perfectly explain why the FreeCAD experience is so consistently bizarre.
If you've been around on the FreeCAD forums, you'll see that the majority of users essentially believe that all comparisons of FreeCAD with commercial CAD software is illegitimate and become incredibly defensive. They have developed a huge arsenal of coping strategies to avoid improving FreeCAD and the results speak for themselves.
It's like they've got the Steve Jobs attitude but without the good taste that justified it.
Exactly. These FreeCAD "strategies" you mention align themselves perfectly with the objectives of the legacy CAD industry: To delay; break; and obfuscate opensource CAD.
In other words: The FreeCAD team may not be infiltrated by the legacy-CAD industry, but its behavior is entirely consistent with such a state.
One solution is to fork the behemoth; but if FreeCAD is a hedge-maze-by-design, the only way to win is not to play the game: Build alternatives elsewhere, from scratch.
FreeCAD feels like a time-drainer honeypot. Though whether by accident, or malice, is unknown.
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.
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.
I’m an CAD hobbyist, and I’ve tried to work with FreeCAD multiple times over past years, always failing….
…until I saw this video and learned about version 1.1:
https://youtu.be/VEfNRST_3x8
FreeCAD is now in the same ballpark of capability and usability as Solidworks. It can still be a bit clunky and frustrating sometimes, but then so can most CAD programs, in their own ways.
Side note: the creator of the video above also has a video on optimising the FreeCAD interface. (There are some frustrations related to the interface generally, and this would seem to be a low hanging fruit for the FreeCAD team to address.)
Not least there are free (as in beer) solutions available, like fusion 360, that are enormously capable.
Theres certainly a place for open source, and openscad would be a great tool to reach for for procedurally generated models. But in all honesty, Freecad doesn't compare well to the professional tools in this space - not in the way that say, gimp does to its commercial competitors.
The current AutoCAD GUI is essentially unchanged from the 80s, so this shouldn't really be much of an issue. They added a ribbon probably 15 years ago at this point, but I can't think of any other major/recent changes. (But maybe there are some changes that I'm not familiar with, since I don't use AutoCAD very often and only started using it relatively recently)
Because... You can copy the UI of the leader and problem solved.
There you have GIMP with an absolute nightmare UI to use, but people keep saying, just get used to it. On the other hand, a single developer, in javascript, made a copy of photoshop, and most people I know prefer to use that over GIMP...
Just copy the UI that works, if you can't research your own UI.
For whatever reason, the FreeCAD community is explicitly against taking note from competitors. Copying the UI of the leader is a thoughtcrime.
Personal Context: I am a civil enginer, and our requirement from CAD softwares are a lot simpler than Mechanical Engineering. Here on HN, whenever I see people discussing CAD, its the mechanical version of parts and 3d printing.
Shameless Plug: I have decided to try building my own! Over a long enough timeline, it is doable, including the UI/UX part.
https://mv.ramshanker.in/
Finding Cadquery less of a hurdle for casual use. Wish I could run it from Termux though.
Speaking of KiCad, I am convincing lots of people to move from EAGLE to it now that EAGLE is about to be killed by AutoDesk, and everyone seem to be having a good time.
I am hoping FreeCAD can become good to the point I can convince people to move to it too.
I would kill for something like KiCad with more refined controls.
FreeCAD may also be good - it's the only other one I haven't tried.
On the other hand if you're convincing EAGLE users to move they'll probably be happy with KiCAD because they're already used to an even worse UX, as if such a thing were possible.
It seems like it's fully community-maintained, there is no big company or foundation behind it. Honestly it's hard to believe!
There was just one major problem, the infamous "topological naming problem" which caused issues downstream is you edited a non-leaf node. That was pretty frustrating to deal with, but in later releases they fixed it I think. (Have not tried it since because I didn't have anything to model)
I don't know much about the internal architecture of FreeCAD. As far as I know, FreeCAD does a lot of heavy lifting including managing TNP. It's supposed to be handled by the CAD kernel - OpenCASCADE in this case. I suspect that the reason why open source CAD lags behind their proprietary counterparts is really the CAD kernel. Many proprietary CAD software share the same kernel, in fact. For example, SolidWorks, Solid Edge and OnShape use Parasolid. It tells you how critical the kernel is.
Perhaps we should be focusing more on a more capable open source CAD kernel. There are a few projects around that are trying this. But they either have very limited scopes, or don't have enough support and momentum.
- colorise solid faces with random colors
- colorise faces by type (cylinder, plane, etc.)
- add 3D labels in the scene
Designing 3D parts is hard enough, and while parametric modeling has uses... come on.
I would love to go back to FreeCAD, but for now I'm using Onshape (I run Linux, so Fusion isn't an option).
As I understand it, there are no other open source alternatives around. On the commercial side there are some, perhaps the foremost being the venerable Parasolid, which is used by Onshape, Solid Edge, Solid Works, Siemens NX, Shapr 3d and others.
Creating a solid 3d kernel is hard. Parasolid is from 1986.
These are almost all caused because they use Open Cascade under the hood
* This needs a better renderer in today's day & age
* Need cross-device/web support
* Topology Optimization w/ pure physics code
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Hopefully LLMs can work on forking this or adding better features with AI-assists