Introduction to FreeCAD Part 1: Getting Started | DigiKey

[@Soiver_]

I just discovered FreeCAD last week and now I see this... I'm blessed today

[@rickh6963]

Shawn, you are the man! You are always making videos on things that are relevant to me exactly when I need them.

[@lewiscobb7817]

NOTE - V1.0 has now been released 😃

[@SatyajitRoy2048]

V1.1 soon too

[@lewiscobb7817]

@@SatyajitRoy2048 I"m always downloading the "weekly dev" versions and they have some really great improvements in them.

[@herrgerd1684]

@@SatyajitRoy2048 and 1.1 will have so many awesome features!

[@Liberty4Ever]

@@SatyajitRoy2048 - FreeCAD 1.1 can't come fast enough. I upgraded to 1.0 recently and after 90 minutes last night trying to design a simple DVD shelf I could have done in 5 minutes, I'm going back to the pre 1.0 release so I can be productive. Part of that was the typical momentary loss of productivity when there's a new release and the user interface changes so I don't know where menu items are and the button icons have moved and no longer look the same, but most of my problems were frustration over needing to hide and un-hide objects to manually refresh them after a chamfer, and not being able to move an object. I quit trying. Apparently the object is in the wrong body, or references the wrong origin or something. FreeCAD 1.0 looks so easy in the videos I watched.

[@jamesrivettcarnac]

Yaaaaaaaaaay

[@Tony770jr]

Thank you. Looking forward to all the lessons.

[@electronichome1153]

Finally!Waited for these series since 5-6 years!

[@Liberty4Ever]

I appreciated the history of FreeCAD. I've been using it for years and it's become much more stable and usable in the last two years, but I didn't know that FreeCAD has existed for so long. I recently upgraded to version 1.0 and I'm no longer productive. I'm learning a new user interface again, but I can no longer do even simple things like moving objects. It suddenly feels like FreeCAD from five years ago where the order of operations cause problems behind the user interface and I'll need to start over a few times to do things the way FreeCAD wants me to work. I suppose these bugs were introduced by the recent attempts to finally fix the topological naming problem. After 90 minutes trying to design a simple DVD shelf I could have done in 5 minutes, I'm going back to the pre 1.0 release so I can be productive.

[@oddlytimbotwillison6296]

That sounds strange! How are you moving objects - with transform? The align tool? Via position in the data view?

[@Liberty4Ever]

@@oddlytimbotwillison6296 - I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, which is to say, not how FreeCAD 1.0 wants me to move objects. I've had no luck using Transform. I can move things by making that body active, and using Placement on that body. That works a lot like if did in FreeCAD 0.21. FreeCAD also seems to want me to use Sketch or Part Design, but seldom both. It's easy to subtract one chamferred part from another in Part Design, but if I do that, it's not possible to select the 45 degree surface as a plane to sketch a couple of holes. If I 2D sketch the base of the angled solids and pad them, then subtract them, I can select the angled face and sketch on that to make the mounting holes. I'm still trying to adapt to FreeCAD 1.0. It's slow, and a bit frustrating. I could quickly CAD whatever I wanted in FreeCAD 0.21.

[@ShawnHymel]

That's frustrating. I did notice that throughout the release candidates, they were slightly moving/changing the GUI. I didn't think it would be a big shift to 1.0. If you're able to get the same RC I used in the videos, then everything should be in the same places.

[@Liberty4Ever]

@@ShawnHymel - I hate going back so I stuck it out with FreeCAD 1.0 last night. I can move objects by ensuring they're in their own Body and then using the Placement feature on the Body, much as I was doing with objects in version 0.21, only slower. I never was able to move anything using Transform despite watching a couple of tutorial videos. I designed my simple DVD shelf using the Sketch workbench by drawing the side and padding it to length and again by using the Part Design workbench to subtract the inner solid from the outer solid (I call this FreeCAD in TinkerCAD mode), so I'm now 30% of my previous FreeCAD productivity. Next, I'll design the DVD shelf using the Sketch workbench, but as a parametric part where the length and thickness can be specified to make a custom shelf. I'll upload that FreeCAD file to Printables and Thingiverse along with STLs for 100, 200 and 300 mm long shelves.

[@JohnOCFII]

Excellent series start! Here's hoping your series can get more folks interested in FreeCAD. I've been focusing on FreeCAD since late 2020, after Fusion experienced the first significant "de-featuring" (especially painful in the Manufacturing/CAM area). As far as CAD goes, I've become quite comfortable with FreeCAD.

[@DerrickBommarito]

More Hymel? On a program I've been looking to get into? More Hymel!

[@DavidTheCVINFECTI]

Holy molly, just in time, thanks.

[@DionVansevenant]

Thanks for this. Looks like there will be a lot to cover. Some things felt a bit rushed near the end, however, since it was intended as a quick demo, not an actual tutorial yet, that's to be expected. I had no idea CAD dated back as far as the late 50's! Surprises me just how long some computer-based stuff has actually been around. And I've been involved with computers since the late 80's.

[@spinyuk]

I've been using Sketchup for years to 'draw' ideas for things, but like you say at the start, I am now considering joining the £Dpinter crowd, so very much looking forward to the next nine vids :)

[@mostafanfs]

Wow I love this guy and everything he teaches!

[@JamesMowery]

Subscribed! Looking forward to this and more FreeCAD content!

[@simstud]

This is an amazing video and series, but I have to take issue with your classifying open source software as unstable and "prone to bugs and crashes". FWIW I work with solidworks all day every day. It crashes so often that it features a crash reporting system to show a graph of crashes per day or per week. And it's STEP import is so broken I use Freecad or SolidEdge to clean up step files to dumb them down enough for solidworks. FOSS can be buggy, and it can be rock solid, just like paid software. The rest of your analysis is spot on, good job.

[@ShawnHymel]

Good to know! I used SolidWorks many years ago, and it seemed pretty stable on the systems we were using.

[@manuelofosu]

Bless you Shawn. I'm migrating from Fusion and really needed this. Thank you!

[@ROBOROBOROBOROBO]

You will unfortunately find the entire journey to be very painful. I hope new version is less buggy but in the past it was impossible for me to do anything with it with dumb errors like cant compute, crashes and so on...

[@manuelofosu]

@@ROBOROBOROBOROBO tThanks buh his is sad

[@ShawnHymel]

@@ROBOROBOROBOROBO There are still a good number of bugs, missing features, and missing documentation, which makes some of the more advanced features quite painful to use. That being said, v1.0 is MUCH more stable than previous versions in my experience. FreeCAD is a great tool for simple, static designs--I use it all the time to make quick parts. For something more advanced (FEM, complex assemblies, etc.), I recommend Fusion, SolidWorks, etc.

[@Skyliptor]

I think the course will be great. As an idea, it may be worth moving the Property View and Task panels to the right and making the construction tree transparent, versions 1.0 and above allow you to do this. This way the program looks clearer and more convenient

[@abhishekkuksal5700]

A very comprehensive guide

[@gryzman]

lovely stuff Shawn

[@GeorgePlaten]

Solid Edge is far more powerful than Solidworks, but is also significantly more difficult to learn. All the main players (not including FreeCAD) use Siemens' solvers, and SE is a Siemens product. Interoperability / file exchange is a key feature needed missing from comparison, IMO. Also, i think Blender's new geometry nodes are a different type of parametric modeling that will be very interesting to watch evolve.

[@glenbrown9825]

Solid edge is neither free or open source. Not a fair comparison

[@Sembazuru]

FreeCAD does have a cloud storage option using the Ondsel Lens addon. I've not used it yet so I don't know how seamless it is on stock FreeCAD or what collaboration features are offered. Ondsel offers a FreeCAD package with their own customizations including Ondsel Lens. Think of it like a different flavor of Linux, but FreeCAD instead.

[@penguin1714]

I personally have never understood why cloud integration into a cad tool would be useful for anyone other than groups of people/teams.

[@Sembazuru]

@penguin1714 Same here. Thus why I haven't bothered to check out the Ondsel Lens add on myself.

[@OzGecko]

Ondesl has been permanently shutdown. Most of their changes to FreeCAD (notably the improved assembly workbench) have been folded into FreeCAD v1.0

[@ShawnHymel]

@@OzGecko That's sad to hear, but understandable. While in the process of making the videos, I had a number of people tell me I should use Ondsel because their UI was really good...but the possibility of them not making it made me worried about showing it off in such videos.

[@nunoguterres8csrc]

this guy is a legend

[@tehmudjinkhan2207]

I was in Fusion 360, struggling to find a tutorial that actually explained how the program works instead of just showing where to click to make a piece of Lego when this video popped up. In the future Idd like to design products that I can sell, and since Im starting small I dont want to pay hundrads of dollars for software. I have high hopes and high expectations!

[@SouperDaveCDN]

Appreciated! But the link to "The written version of this guide..." is broken. Thanks!

[@ShawnHymel]

Thanks for catching that! I'll get them published ASAP.

[@jamesrivettcarnac]

I was in the process of switching to onshape, for the assembly stuff.

[@chrisheaps9893]

The link in your video description is broken.

[@ShawnHymel]

Thanks for the heads up, I'll get the post published ASAP.

[@Sembazuru]

Lol. I can tell it took a while to publish this series. As of Nov 19, 2024 (almost 1 month before publication date) FreeCAD 1.0 was officially released. Hopefully there won't be much (if any) differences between the pre-release that Shawn uses and the official released 1 month ago. I'm not poking fun at Shawn, rather commiserating with him over poor timing. I look forward to the rest of the series. I expect him to cover things that I haven't been doing in the most efficient way, as well as a couple things that I haven't played with in FreeCAD (the new Assembler, FEM, the more advanced lofting, etc.).

[@Sembazuru]

Ah... Video recorded back in August, a good 3 months before the official release date.

[@ShawnHymel]

@@Sembazuru Yeah, FreeCAD was going through RC revisions quickly while I was trying to film :) Most of the features are there, but some of the colors and item locations are a little off.

[@ziad_jkhan]

Why not use the open theme for this tutorial, which is so much better?

[@JM-jk9vz]

From the comparison chart, it sounds Fusion 360 is the best choice.

[@ulysisxtr]

Solid Edge is light years ahead of Solidworks in ease of use.

[@atilasatilmis9986]

Which one easier? Ordered or synchronous?

[@ulysisxtr]

@@atilasatilmis9986 It depends. There are a few cases: Beginners who never used any cad software before; Beginners who never used cad software before but have learned technical skills (engineering, etc); People who have used cad software before (not necessarily parametric) but are looking for alternatives; People who have worked with mechanical engineering with parametric cads and are moving from other platforms (inventor, catia, etc). Ordered or synchronous being easy or not may depend on familiarity as well.

[@ytskt]

​@@atilasatilmis9986depends on familiarity.

[@kotronics_arts]

So after 20 minutes of BS backstory, you ALMOST GET TO THE PART OF YOUR VIDEO we tuned in for ... and then you completely blow the Getting Started part.

[@DionVansevenant]

He did mention a couple of times "skip this or go to the next video...." and clearly outlined the syllabus, noting that more detail will be in subsequent videos. As to the "BS backstory", it was actually an interesting history of CAD and FreeCAD in general. Again, you could have freely skipped it, instead of complaining. Especially since the chapters are clearly listed in the description. Considering this is a free series that looks like it will be covering a fair bit of detail in subsequent videos, perhaps a "thank you" would be in order. Or, go make your own tutorial.