Just dual boot...
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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Man, we as a community really ought to put more effort and resources helping out FreeCAD.
For me it's all about learning freecad so I can look down upon the cloud cad peasants ๐น
For real though I completely agree. Freecad is just a plugin away from having a more accessible UI.
the ui is actually pretty good when you get used to it imo, it's just that it's very busy and intimidating for beginners
I think there should just be a simple builtin tutorial that beginners can access, that guides them through making a cylinder or something to assure them that freecad isn't as intimidating as it looks
That's a good idea, and I think that teaching yourself parametric CAD for the first time in freecad is extra difficult because it is easy to do things that look like they may work but actually break you model (especially dragging stuff around in the hierarchy).
I'm a mechanical engineer and have spent literal years in front of Creo and SolidWorks. Trying to use FreeCAD felt like flying a Cessna 172 after being accustomed to a business jet; they can ostensibly get you where you need to go, but the cost in effort to use the tool is not worth the cost saved in buying the commercial tool.
totally get your point but I just don't want to relearn the cad program when those proprietary options inevitably enshittify lmao
The best parametric CAD tutorials I found were those for OnShape.
Onshape and Fusion360 both have tons of great tutorials available, and they are completely free for non-commercial use. There is a reason those are used by almost everyone in the 3d printing community.
"And they are completely free for non-commercial use." I have seen both of their "community" or "maker" tiers get worse over time; the terms of those licenses becoming less permissive. I've been told by an Autodesk employee that it doesn't exist for Fusion360. "There is no free software here." I suggest against building anything that matters to you against those platforms.
As long as you don't need much, they are free. But, the good stuff is all pay to play.
FreeCAD's UI is good enough to work, but not to everyone's taste. Personally, I detest the clown car UI of Fusion and it's lack of customization for my work flow - custom pie menus rock. Something that FreeCAD allows the user to do. Not to mention the half-assed mix of local install/cloud that is Fusion360. It locks your projects in the cloud subject to AutoDesk's whims, but eats your local storage. At least OnShape and TinkerCAD is all cloud and honest about it. But it's all pay to play if you want access to the good stuff.
They are improving the FreeCAD UI slowly. The Ondsel version, (based on the 0.22 Dev release), gets high marks from a lot of users about the UI design. Not my personal cup 'o tea, but I do see the allure for many users. Besides, if you don't like how it works, you can easily customize things to your personal tastes.
Foss tends to struggle with UI design. Gnome is the best UI I have scene from an app UI perspective.
Ondsel
They are really putting in the work to make FreeCAD not suck. I was a SolidWorks pro and still found FreeCAD quite unintuitive to use. Ondsel has fixed a lot of those issues... looking at you dimensioning tool. It also "just works" on Linux which is really nice (a friend tried on windows and not so much lol)
I try to use dxf instead of dwg when I can, it's got everything I need. I think the public sector should require open standards for submissions.
There's also Blender and Openscad. Both really good
They're both really good (considerably better at what they do than FreeCAD is, to be honest), but they don't do what FreeCAD does. Blender is for art, so that's a different thing entirely. OpenSCAD does mechanical part design, but it only does mechanical part design. FreeCAD can do architectural CAD, BIM (Building Information Modeling), civil engineering stuff (e.g. working with survey data/site elevation), FEA (Finite Element Analysis), 2D drafting, stuff with NURBS and point clouds, texturing/lighting/rendering, CAM and CNC (i.e. toolpaths for a mill or 3D printer), etc.
I have actual designed 3d print stuff in Blender and it turned out fine. There are people out there who only use Blender for 3d modeling and there are even plug ins that allow better functionality. Though, I've been trying to transition to Freecad since it's much more cad focused.
I wish the had some sort of paid version. (No proprietary software though)
Yes. For me, creating car body shells, FreeCAD doesn't come close. It seems most FOSS programmers don't need complex shape surfacing to scratch an itch, so that is a long way off. For now.