Escape from the claws of the corporate CAD overlords - with FreeCAD!

FreeCAD has enormous aspirations - but it struggles to deliver. But use it right and it's actually pretty decent!
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[@FreeCADAcademy]

Thanks for making FreeCAD more popular with your enormous reach!

[@UltimatePerfection]

Maybe if it had easy to understand interface without all those weird modes you have to switch between just to make a friggin cylinder, it would be more popular.

[@baumkuchen6543]

He basically said indirectly that it sucks and the video was just discouraging.

[@farouqstray1411]

@@baumkuchen6543 No, he said he wants FreeCAD to be better, and inditectly it's worth the try, and the support

[@farouqstray1411]

We Hope to see FreeCAD the best alternative to Autocad, for the rest of us who can't afford the greed of big companies like autodesk, and I'm willing to start learning it, thank you so much for this software!!

[@silvk1000]

@FreeCADAcademy how about making the UI better instead of watching youtube? You will gain more users that way for sure...

[@MaximKachurovskiy]

I switched to FreeCAD this year after a few years in Fusion 360. It was 10 hours of pain and now it's OK so if you're looking to make the switch, be ready to commit some time. The reason for FreeCAD complexity and fragility is that's tackling the 1-2 orders of magnitude more complex of a problem than the one OctoPrint is solving. Having many contributors probably also doesn't help with consistency, refactoring and feature removal (there's always someone who's used to an old way of doing something). FreeCAD was progressing nicely in the past few years though so there's hope. Please donate it some money :) I did.

[@dnmnsmith]

Sometimes i can make freecad work. Every time it is harder to get the same result. Often i fail entirely.

[@aaronkeler7432]

If FreeCAD was the only software I use I could totally get it to work with good results and I think it's quite a powerful tool. For me the main obstacle is that the way of operating it is somewhat different from Solidworks and Creo which I use for hours every day at work

[@hanswurst9866]

Also, the Linkstage3 = Realthunder branch is really good and solves or alleviates many problems.

[@RafaGmod]

If you dont want to donate, just using it helps a lot! Using it, complaining in the forum and finding bugs helps A LOT! Seeing people engaged motivate contributors also!

[@MrJacobegg]

I have no idea how anyone could get comfortable using FreeCAD in only 10 hours. I've spent literally weeks and months trying to use FreeCAD on a couple different occasions and have pretty much given up for good until they make some massive changes, along the lines of what Tom is talking about here. And I'm not some Luddite. I'm a software engineer, I spend ridiculous amounts of time on on the computer using all kinds of software, I've being using a variety of 3D and CAD programs since the early 90s. FreeCAD is easily the most frustratingly horrible user experience of any piece of software I've ever used. Some software is meant for experts and power users and is totally inaccessible to me users. Other software is really easy to use for new users, but isn't powerful or customizable enough for power users. But the UI and workflow of FreeCAD are both such hot garbage that it's neither accessible to new users *nor* easy to use for power users. Sure, if you've been using FreeCAD for long enough that you know it inside and out, you *might* be able to do something simple *almost* as fast as an experienced user of a CAD program like Fusion or SolidWorks. But the learning curve to get there is just ridiculous. And last time I looked, trying to do something like assemblies with moving parts (relatively easy in say Fusion) was all but impossible in FreeCAD. There were some workbenches and unofficial forks that were trying valiantly to implement assemblies, and I even donated to one for a while, but I eventually I just came to the conclusion that it was a lost cause and it wasn't worth spending countless hours of my limited free time trying to get FreeCAD to do things that I could do in minutes in several other CAD programs. Ultimately, FreeCAD has a leadership problem. The people who run the project have been pretty open that they simply don't care about making the software accessible. Which is really sad because I feel like FreeCAD has a lot of potential and it would be amazing to have an OSS alternative to software like Fusion 360 and SolidWorks that doesn't suck.

[@MMuraseofSandvich]

The good news about FreeCAD is that its dev community is more active than ever, and I really hope this means we'll get a workflow that rivals Blender or maybe even Fusion.

[@luizcarlosquerido2943]

20 years in version 0.21 is "more active" for you? Really?

[@meunome5867]

@@luizcarlosquerido2943 Exactly, even at 0.21 FREECAD is already turning some heads (for me, it's the opposite of what you're implying), there's a reason for the "boom" in activity, it's because the other CAD companies weren't suing cracking versions and also the pricing looks weird (their programs are the same for 10+ years lol), which makes FC more atractive :),

[@FluffyOwl-Uhma]

@@luizcarlosquerido2943 20 years on version 0.21? What the hell you are talking about? I am one of the first persons who says that FreeCad UIX experience is horrible. Even Siemens SolidEdge is miles ahead. But stating nonsense that they have been 20 years on version 0.21? You needed only 5 minutes of research to see your statement is completely false.

[@deterdamel7380]

I started 3D modeling with freeCad. In the beginning it was a bit frustrating, but after watching some hours of tutorials and some practice it works without issues, doesn't hurt me anymore and does what I expect. And every new release makes big progress.

[@Hukkinen]

This is exactly what I'm always thinking: The pain points between novice and intermediate user. How long is the learning curve and how are things after getting there

[@WurstPeterl]

Thank you for making this video! I sincerely hope FreeCAD gets the same development boost KiCAD got. After Eagle got acquired by Autodesk in 2016, many open hardware products that had previously relied on Eagle 6 shifted towards KiCAD. Before the 4.0 release of KiCAD it was very similar in many aspects to the FreeCAD of today. It worked well enough for 95% of all tasks, but the workflow was never friction free. The immense contributions by CERN made KiCAD a whole lot better to the point where it is at least as good as other commercially available ECAD tools. FreeCAD needs at least one developer who works full time on this and is capable of managing a team of volunteers and/or paid devs. And that needs funding…..lots of funding.

[@riz94107]

This! Please this! KiCAD 6 does almost everything i need it to these days... I'd love a FreeCAD that didn't leave me feeling stupid.

[@gerritvisser]

actually they need a Product Manager who tells/guides the devs what to focus on. My issue with many FOSS projects is that they resemble anarchy. A lot of talent working hard on their idea/thing. but lacking cohesive direction and guidance. The next issue is branches, now the pool of talent gets splintered some more. IMO this is one of the reasons the OpenOffice et al failed to get traction, too many versions of similar things, but none complete enough to replace Office in a commercially meaningful way. I'm glad KiCAD got it togehter, but I had already moved on to DipTrace because I needed to actually get stuff done.

[@Sembazuru]

I really focused my efforts in learning FreeCAD once the KiCadStepUp Workbench was developed for leveraging FreeCAD as MCAD for the KiCad workflow.

[@ericwilner1403]

I'm still using EAGLE v7, but have been looking for alternatives ever since Autodesk happened. The latest release of KiCad does indeed look promising - and, once I get up to speed on it, it should be something I can recommend to clients who do occasional circuit designs or who just might need to maintain designs that I've done for them - the niche EAGLE used to fill, back in the day.

[@tmartin9482]

I think that neither the lack of free alternatives nor increased funding automatically makes FreeCAD a better software. What this software really needs is a STRONG focus on usability. Like Tom, I return to FreeCAD every now and then when the 'freemium' like plan of the CAD tool I am currently using removes a feature that is important to me, only to realize once again - inadequate UX.

[@unsearchable4060]

It definitely suffers from the pre-blender-2.8 problem of "this could be great, if it got usability polish for people who aren't FOSS die-hards". Hopefully we see that "blender 2.8" version of freecad someday.

[@harmless1106]

I still have all the pre 2.8 hotkeys and icons in my muscle memory. It adds a lot of time when you have to look for something. I wish they would have kept some option for legacy icons.

[@DogFaceMaker]

This comment made me laugh - FOSS die-hards. It is so true. What is it about FOSS that includes a UI designed by a committee of developers that hate users? lol

[@cprogrck]

Blender pre 2.8 was brilliant. Easily my favorite UI of all time. The problem is that people never bothered to read the user manual. It was a tile based window system where everything is an editor and nothing block anything else. 💕

[@pizzablender]

@@DogFaceMaker Doing an excellent UI is really hard. It requires specialists. And guess what, technical projects do not attract such specialists.

[@unsearchable4060]

@@DogFaceMaker Definitely that people interested in programming solutions for the technical problems think they can do everything themselves, but don't have UI/UX/Design experience. so you get software that's functionally correct but rather rigid and difficult to intuit.

[@GlenJackson]

As others have stated, the Topological Naming Problem seems to be what separates FreeCAD from the other parametric modeling programs that let you reference any geometry to perform new operations. FreeCAD will let you make the reference, but if the earlier geometry changes, the subsequent operations can fail or reference the wrong object. Keeping this in mind while modeling with FreeCAD helped me create more robust models. One method that tends to get around this is to use the FreeCAD spreadsheet to create a list of variables to contain your parameters, and then using those variables to drive your geometric constraints. This also puts all the inputs in one place rather than distributed across a number of sketches. I also found the tutorials by Free CAD Academy to be very helpful. In general, I'll use FreeCAD for the times I need something simple but parametric, but for something more complex or something that I do not expect the geometry to need to be edited parametrically, I'll use something like SketchUp or Rhino3D or Blender.

[@matneu27]

The topology problem is almost no longer an issue if you use realthunders freeCad branch also there are many more improvements compared to the main version.

[@GlenJackson]

@@matneu27 I may just give that a shot! Would be nice to know if there's an intent to roll his improvements back into the main version.

[@RubenVinuela]

It is true that the topological problem exists. But you get used to e.g. instead of picking a face and creating a sketch over it, (in which if you remove it or change the model you brake the geometry), you use datum planes instead, and construct over them, and finally at the end you have a more tidy design. It forces you to be tidy, thats good and bad at the same time, because sometimes you want something done fast. It has similar features than other CADs, but it is really meant to work different thing.

[@MongrelShark]

I had a similar experiance. Its a bit like learning to drive in an old bomb of a car. You have more challenges, but it makes you a better driver in the end.

[@julias-shed]

@@GlenJackson I think there is a big effort to pull in some of Realthunder’s changes into the main branch this year.

[@salsusmagnsu]

As a Linux user, I have used FreeCAD for Hobby 3D printing almost exclusively. Once I learned the quirks, I am productive and efficient at creating functional models. I have hundreds of functional models that I have created for the house, my cars, and other hobbies. I try to donate each year to the project. I really like having complete, perpetual ownership of my models and access to the tools to manipulate them. All the other packages seem to want you to store stuff in their cloud, or otherwise give them the power to squeeze you.

[@SilasDrewchin]

You sound like an awesome person. I want to be your friend and Collab on diy genius stuff

[@retromodernart4426]

No they "all" don't, it seems you never heard of IronCAD...

[@why6212]

This is the way

[@salsusmagnsu]

@@retromodernart4426 You are correct I hadn't heard of it, and it does look like granting perpetual licensing is one of their selling points. Pricing seems a little steep for the hobbyist, (almost $4000) but professionally this seem like a option worth looking into. Of course, eventually you will have to re-license again, if you need updates, since the perpetual is locked to the version you license.

[@retromodernart4426]

@@salsusmagnsu Thanks for your reasonable reply. IronCAD has a genuinely free unlimited (even has full multisim, etc.) feature educational program for any student with a student ID (including middle school and up), as long as the student has a valid student ID, and periodically large discounts for professional licenses. For professional use it can't be beat, price-performance wise, and one can keep all data local (and work offline/air-gapped if needed). I use the dongle version so I can work at different locations as needed using only one license (stick the dongle in any computer with the software and it fires up).

[@ignoritos]

FreeCAD is listed as a main open source engineering tool by the Open Toolchain Foundation and already got some extra hands and funding (last week or the week before) for its development. OSEG is directly involved in the efforts.

[@RobJess]

I'm so glad that the Open Toolchain Foundation exists

[@tmartin9482]

I see project partners from the public sector and immediately have an unpleasant smell of failure in my nose. As much as I appreciate this initiative, my experience tells me that it won't work.

[@wtice4632]

​@cas curse take off the tin foil hat

[@ignoritos]

@@RobJess Me too!

[@ignoritos]

@@tmartin9482 I also worry about those things but sometimes it's a matter of choice: I choose to believe. I know a few of the people involved and they bring a lot of momentum with. They are motivated, they have very well defined goals and they are organized.

[@Slide100]

I moved from OpenSCAD to FreeCAD. Once I got the drift of the sketches and constraints, my designs made a quantum leap. I'm now easily able to make parts that fit together properly. More complex parts take more time, but the results have been awesome. It works for me 🙂

[@ifell3]

OpenSCAD, isn't that the one where you have to enter distances manually?

[@banknote501]

@@ifell3 Yes, but it works. If you are used to it, you can design simple parts very quickly. Chamfers and such things are a big problem though.

[@Slide100]

@@ifell3 Its known as “programmers CAD” to make a 50x50x25 cube you would use: cube ([50,50,25]); (Edit: as pointed out by Daniel CH, the brackets were reversed in the above) I’m not good with math, so I can use the simpler stuff, but some of the higher functions are beyond my ken. 🙂

[@qlum]

If you want to stay with cad in code, you could also try cadquery2 or or build123d they use the same occt kernel freecad uses but interfaces with it via a python api

[@danielch6662]

​@@Slide100 shouldn't that be cube([50,50,25]) ? The IDE does come withba syntax highlighter to emphasize mismatched parentheses, right?

[@jonallen8023]

Jumped into FreeCAD early last year after I finally got a 3D printer. A couple months went by where every part I designed was a struggle. I believe it's worth it to be free from Autodesk and keep my files local.

[@thecrazyinsanity]

just pirate it lol

[@kristoflajber8236]

You can have audosek inventor probably under a similar licence, and you can have SolidEdge community, and SolidEdge is a professional grade software.

[@ChazmillsADLT]

I’ve used FreeCAD for years and love that no one has asked me to subscribe….yet! I am retired and my brain isn’t so good so I’ve never been able to use the sketch side of it but for the home items I design and use it’s great. Stuff for my caravan, car, tools and even catchers for my mosquito blinds. I’ve tried the others but far far too difficult for me. Thank you FreeCAD

[@lukrative525]

When I started learning CATIA v5 in college, I was at first put off by the dated UI, but quickly came to appreciate how polished the back end is. Apparently 20+ years of iteration (backed by lots of funding) worked most of the bugs out. I could count the number of times that CATIA has crashed on me on two hands, and that's after well over 1000 hours using it. Solidworks on the other hand...

[@Phil_Ipp]

I can not agree with that. As someones who worked professionally with CATIA v5, I can say that I have had days when CATIA crashed half a dozen times, because surfaces or cuts have become too complex or have become twisted. And if you really screw up, CATIA error messages come up every now and then in French. So I can say that there are quite a few bugs in CATIA despite this long development time. CATIA is certainly not perfect and the interface is certainly confusing for newcomers. But I have also worked with other CAD programs, such as NX and Inventor or Fusion in the hobby area and none of these programs is without errors. The problem that I have, both with Fusion360 as well as with other CAD programs and especially with FreeCAD is that I learned CATIA first and know it to the core and next to CATIA everything else is a toy. If you compare CATIA with FreeCAD, it's like comparing Photoshop with Microsoft Paint (a bit exaggerated). There are so many functions that do not exist in FreeCAD, which certainly a hobby user who has never worked professionally with a tool like CATIA, will not miss at all and whose function you certainly do not necessarily need, but I am used to them and miss them. Nice that there is such a professional program like Fusion360 for free for Maker, it would be dreamlike if there was a similar licensing model for CATIA.

[@Eng_Simoes]

Old school here, worked over 10 years with Catia V4, it was a beast (both capabilities and appearance). When we first saw Catia V5 we all thought: this is not serious, it's meant for kids. Many years later, I'd say that the only thing that matters is productivity: how fast can you deliver a new design? Whatever works for you. This will depend a lot on what type of work you do.

[@zedex1226]

For my use cases that's how I feel about geomagic. The stuff it's doing in the background to pull off a few of it's signature "party tricks" is amazing. Really glad the licensing fees don't come out of my pocket 😂

[@vladmirputin7139]

Catia crashed on me 3 times today.

[@tomfoolery2913]

I'm using Catia in uni right now. Safe to say that V5 3dx is not nearly as stable, I've had it crash on me many many times. But I love it, it's so powerful, I can do anything I want with it. It makes me sad realizing that there's a good chance I won't get to use it after uni, depending on where I work. I would love a maker Catia license, but sadly Dassault doesn't seem interested in having that as an option :(

[@sirforcer]

As someone with a game dev/animation background, I mainly do direct modeling in Maya and Zbrush. However, ever since I started working in 3D printing I've had more and more clients bring me step files, which are not compatible with direct modeling tools. This is where free open source tools like FreeCAD are great for me. It might not be the best, but it has enough to at the very least allow me to open STEP files, make basic edits, and then export in a format that I can use in my preferred tools. It's probably not the intended workflow/use case of the software, but at the very least in that capacity it has become invaluable to my work.

[@craigedwards2411]

Donations are always welcome Thomas so that FreeCAD becomes a better open source competitor to the commercial stuff.

[@pengain4]

That's correct (and very true) statement but, sadly, the reality is that for huge amount of people ethical/ideological reasons are not enough. Especially if they can use production-grade, more mature, more UX-friendly solutions for free. P.S. I'm exclusively FreeCad user because I'm trying to use libre tools as much as possible and because I'm just a hobby maker.

[@pengain4]

On the other hand we have opensource contributors that are extremely unappreciated and underfunded. That's very sad reality. :(

[@craigedwards2411]

@@pengain4 Totally agree with you. It is super to easy to see what people believe in by just simply checking what actions they take. I am also a hobby maker (I am sure that that is probably pushing it far ) and I try to support the community as I can (usually via donation).

[@craigedwards2411]

@@pengain4 That is accurate.

[@randoguy7488]

GIMP has had more than 1.5 million $ in crypto donations yet the UX is still bad. Competing with commercial stuff requires a change in mentality, so far it's only present in Blender and Musescore, the rest still repeats "want change? , code it yourself, we don't need designers"

[@sgavy]

I personally believe it's going to take someone like Prusa to kick start an open source community focused CAD that makes functional sense.

[@brianmi40]

FreeCAD has some rough edges and workarounds you have to learn, but it does make functional sense as a parametric CAD system, based on both my experience, and demoing for my niece who gets paid $100K/yr. to do AutoCAD. In 8 hours (from a basis of a good understanding of TinkerCAD and a few hours trying to learn ViaCAD years ago, I was able to learn it well enough to successfully recreate a window regulator part for a car that involved 2 boolean curved cuts, internal cavities for the springs and steel cable, cutouts for TPU inserts for padding, as well as conforming to the hole in the window glass at two different angles to capture it to move it up and down. I used 8 test prints along the way, and afterward could probably do one for a different car in about 4 test prints... You can confirm its usability via any of dozens of KZbin videos where anything from an exhaust manifold that joins 4 curved pipes together, to create the external body shape for a car is taught in clear steps.

[@TheSuburban15]

@@brianmi40 I think I've used almost 10 different CAD programs over the course of 28 years. With the exception of one simple 2D-only program, they all have their own rough edges and workarounds. That being said, I don't like FreeCAD. It feels like it takes 3 times longer than it should to sketch complex shapes.

[@TheOfficialDarkICE]

@@TheSuburban15 For me it's unusable because it couldn't even open the voron cad files without freezing. Even when it doesn't you can't use it like in fusion.

[@andybrice2711]

Blender's interface is becoming more intuitive with every version. And it's turning into a very powerful, extensible, cross-platform hardware-accelerated 3D GUI framework. I think the best bet is probably to decouple the geometric computation functionality in open-source CAD projects. And then they could be forked into Blender plugins. That way, programmers can focus on the mathematics. And designers can focus on the GUI.

[@Tuskengod]

@@andybrice2711 You know, there IS a program called CADSketcher which is a CAD plugin for blender. I have high hopes for it honestly.

[@TK-Titanium]

I had never used CAD software before trying FreeCAD. I struggled quite a bit but figured that was just the learning curve. It makes me feel much better to have you pointing out some issues you had as an experienced CAD user that reflected my own. I've successfully made several functional parts with it but it was always such an annoying, unintuitive, and vague-error prone struggle that I would resist using it.

[@dtibor5903]

It's pure pain

[@TheSuburban15]

Pretty experienced CAD user here. I feel the same way about FreeCAD. Probably some of it is a bias toward the way sketching works in other programs, but it takes me significantly longer to sketch in FreeCAD than it does in Fusion or CATIA.

[@SrObser]

It is exhausting. I'm glad most things I use cad for aren't quite rigid that I need a constraint-based modeling, and there are several cad modelers now that are easier and more reliable. I can get something going with plasticity in a fraction of a time that it would take me with freecad.

[@davenarisotto3674]

As a total noob I started with FreeCad and had a hard time. About a year ago I switched to Onshape and it's just a lot easier, at least from a newbie perspective. The tool that made me instantaneously switch is the projection tool. Anyways the FreeCad team is doing an awesome job, open source is a blessing for humanity

[@brianmi40]

I looked at OnShape, but after learning FreeCAD, they really function with similar capabilities. Projection is just Pad in FreeCAD, or for a complex surface, it's the Curves Workbench. In fact, creating a curved complex surface, such as for a computer mouse body, they really work basically the same way as you can see in these two videos... OnShape: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qHnFfWObfsSKfNE FreeCAD: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eXK3gI1qoqqqsNE

[@graealex]

It's okay to be pragmatic and use the tool that works best for you. You aren't personally offending anyone, including the FreeCAD team, by using Fusion or Onshape. There is some philosophical point to be made about how basic computer tools should be available to everyone, but that doesn't mean everyone has to suffer from the idiosyncrasies in FreeCAD.

[@PUMAMicroscope]

I built a complex open source research grade 3D printable microscopy system entirely with FreeCAD. Many of my models are highly complex and I had no trouble designing them in FreeCAD. Interestingly I have no experience with other CAD packages so maybe this is why I do not get confused or frustrated. For example, I would go about modelling that planter pot in a very different way to you, the route you chose seems unnecessarily complicated and long winded but perhaps that is due to the prior experience you have with those other CAD packages. Thanks for the great video!

[@ernesthader1109]

Amen to this! I wish somebody would teach the proper philosophy on designing in FreeCAD. It may just be a different design paradigm just like in blender vs maya.

[@2QRh6g1I]

Common core math!!

[@Validole]

Maybe... Can you elaborate? How would you have approached it? Starting with a body of revolution and adding thinckness like he did seems like the obvious way to me too.

[@lolatmyage]

@@Validole If you sketch the side profile onto a base plane, referencing off the origin, and revolve it, then it is guaranteed to work and make you that cup shape. Right now using FreeCAD is all about finding solutions that are unbreakable. In other CAD programs you have hidden algorithms working away fixing all these mistakes/problems, letting you cut a lot of corners, can't do that in FreeCAD

[@jonathanbecker6373]

I seldom go a month without using FreeCAD since ~2016. Just about any printed part in our lab was designed in it. Appreciation and gratitude.

[@chrisBruner]

I'm a linux user, and compile and use freecad as my main cad system. Once you get past the workbench paradigm (they are really just pluggins) it becomes easier and easier to use. I originally started with openscad which is cad by programming. Occasionally I come across something that I want to do and openscad is the best choice. (mathicmatical functions make some very cool 3d prints).

[@Splarkszter]

interesting. Can you leave a source/link for the plugin recommendations?

[@kontoname]

Copium. Let's just not improve the software - just tell people to, quote: "once you get past", it'll be better. It's bad to the point of being horrible. It being free doesn't outweigh the amount of money even cheap or other free alternatives cost. Like so many open source projects it fails because people don't care. They're experts at using it, so why innovate right? We've ridden these freaking horses for hundreds of years, let's keep riding horses! I'm sick of reading these posts and factually it's the reason why nobody likes Linux deskop or most of the software with a few lucky exceptions where people are REALLY motivated or basically just financed from the outside so it's a hidden payware product.

[@MrKuncol]

Workbenches copied from Catia aren't problem. How half baked basically all modules are is. It's slow, extremely buggy, limited and nothing really works like one would expect. I used many different CAD software in my life (from QCad and AutoCad to Catia and SolidWorks) and only one I had problem with making some even basic projects is FreeCAD and that's shame because I really wanted to like it.

[@Splarkszter]

@@MrKuncol You can... you know... do it yourself or pay someone to do it. It's open source. do a fork and you can do whatever you want.

[@evo-labs]

Using a plug-in architecture to implement functionality can be a problematic design pattern - and on the surface it seems to be in the case of FreeCAD. Smells like leaky abstraction to me.

[@ianphilip6281]

Been using it for ages. For the newcomers there is a learning cliff rather than a curve but stick with it. Every release gets better and better. Don't forget to contribute back to the dev community if you can.

[@tmartin9482]

Usability is a fundamental requirement of a software product, and the learning curve is significantly part of it. Shortcomings in this area are a deal-breaker. If it's no good - don't use it.

[@mynt4033]

It needs the tinkercad mouse controls if it wants to absorb userbases. I can't use anything that doesnt let me rotate with rightmouse.

[@tmartin9482]

@@mynt4033 I'm afraid it's not that simple. Tom makes it fairly clear that it's not just about the graphical interface, but about basic concepts of how FreeCAD interprets and implements CAD.

[@adrianinsaval]

@@mynt4033 it has the tinkercad mouse model as an option, this is the most mundane requirement ever though

[@ianphilip6281]

@@mynt4033 not my thing. I think that is a different target audience to be fair to both of them. I prefer to do it numerically and parametrically for precision and accuracy. In FC You can toggle moving things with a one click button before hand and then move them by the relevant axis's. Tinkercad is a tool anybody can use, like a plank with a nail in it. By comparison FreeCAD is a very sharp rapier; harder to use but more precise.

[@bjrnbirkeland5893]

Switched from Fusion to FreeCAD, modelling takes more time yes, but love the freedom! You need to invest some time to figure out what works and what do not. 1000 Thanks to the developers for such an amazing tool ❤. I'am so glad to be free!

[@ucoder8905]

constraints in freecad make a bit more sense to me than fusion or inventor.

[@woodwaker1]

I appreciate your time and input. I have looked at FreeCAD, and Fusion 360, but am still sticking with TinkerCad. I am over 70 years old and my concern is that I will be dead, before I learn any of these. I wish there was a CAD program like TinkerCad with just a little more power.

[@Drew_pew_pew_pew]

If you are happy with TinkerCad stay with it, no shame at all. The only thing I want to point out is that you don't need to learn all the features from fusion 360 or freecad to get you going and make some more difficult parts. Learning about a sketch and constraints and some basic operations like pockets is rather straight forward and all happens in one workbench and gets you very far.

[@rubenu5157]

Alibre Atom 3D. I was up and running in one hour. Best $150 I've spent.

[@ianhaylock7409]

Though it's a 3D slicer MatterControl has simple CAD abilities, similar to TinkerCad, but more advanced. Here's a tutorial that shows some of what it can do. kzbin.info/www/bejne/hKjLhaOAdpx3rrs

[@michaelj3971]

I'm in a similar situation in that I am 69 years old, and just started with CAD after I retired. I used FreeCAD for about 9 months, but switched to Fusion 360 because I probably don't have many years of designing left in me, and I wanted something that didn't force me to deal with problems within the CAD software. Fusion 360 just works, and it is much faster to get results than FreeCAD. Tinkercad is easy for making simple things, but much harder to make functional parts where accuracy and tolerance are important. I am currently introducing my 7 yr old grandson to Tinkercad. It is a fine tool. But there are some things where Fusion 360 is necessary, and it is not difficult to use for most of my design projects.

[@woodwaker1]

@@michaelj3971 I have too many projects in the works to spend the time learning F360. Glad you are working with it!

[@HexenzirkelZuluhed]

I've moved vom F360 to FreeCAD, and you are correct. It's a lot harder to get things done at first. You can get great results, but you got to know a lot more about the program. But I'm also one who prefers GIMP to Photoshop, because I know where all the stuff is in the tool I use. On the other hand: there are a lot of improvements in the pipeline and I hope they will address some of the complaints you have. Still, at least to me the steeper learning curve did pay off.

[@RubenVinuela]

I had a similar experience, the steep learning curve payed off, and also it allows to fully control it and extend it in python, which gives you SOOO many choices, like creating custom interfaces for CNC machines and things like that.

[@MakenModify]

I fully switched to FreeCad 2 years ago and came from the same cad background (all of them). Most critical point: Don't use anything but real thunders fork! The issue with braking things when you change something in the past that is due to the "topological naming problem" that is fixed in RTs fork. Splitting bodys in the part design workbench? Works in RTs fork. And sooo many convenient features... It all slowly drips back into main line but is drop by drop while RT is hosing down his fork. I wish that would not be the current state but that's what it is for me.

True words, Thomas. I almost exclusively design in FreeCAD (the rest is in OpenSCAD) and it is a tough beast to tame. Realthunder release helps a lot - and I would recomment anyone to start with it, not with the official release.

[@Pixelwaster]

I have no problems using freeCAD, but then I didn't have to unlearn "real" CAD. MangoJelly channel has a great beginner series. When I went to GIMP from Photoshop, steep un-learning curve. I've used PS from 6.5, Just PS6.5. I stopped upgrading when they went to download only, no box. CS6? I knew they were going to the subs model. Every piece of software I've ever owned that went that way died. The size of the company determined how long it would take. My jump to GIMP full time came when Adobe disabled my box install version of PS CS6.

[@glabifrons]

This is how companies are unwittingly driving people to open-source. :) For another example, see the moves Fusion360 made a year or three ago. That brought a deluge of people to FreeCAD. I never had the patience or background to learn Gimp... from what I understand, it's super easy to learn if you have a background in PhotoShop. FreeCAD, on the other hand, had a little bit of a learning curve, but is similar enough to my memory of Pro/ENGINEER from the mid '90s that I fell right into it. The most amazing thing is how extensible it is... I'm really only strong in a few workbenches and have played withe a few others.

[@dbudnymt]

I really like FreeCAD, but I'm also a big FOSS fan because I don't like how commercial companies change things and charge "subscription" rates. I don't have any formal training in CAD use/design so I had to watch a lot of videos to learn. One of my favorites is Joko Engineering. He's got a good playlist to teach how to use FreeCAD.

[@maxxm.108]

Joko is great👍I would also recommend allvisuals4u and mango jelly solutions for freecad.

[@nufnuf816]

I can totally agree - JOKO Engineering - the guy has a gift to explain things easily and naturally. I never worked in any CAD before, and thanks to his videos I was able to create complex models for my 3D prints within few days.

[@knucklehead83]

I've been watching the mango freecad tutorials. They're very difficult to follow. I watch another tutorial series by a guy that speaks very broken English, but somehow explains things far better than Mango does. I'm taking a look at Joko Engineering now. Thanks for the suggestion.

[@dbudnymt]

@@knucklehead83 I hope you get as much from his videos as I have. I'm sure that there are lots of good KZbin channels on FreeCAD, but this was the one that resonated with me.

[@Audio_Simon]

I think it's valuable to know FreeCAD also has a CAM option called Path Workbench. Not all CAD packages do CAM.

[@Z-add]

Freecad hasn't even done CAD right. I wonder what mess they have created in the CAM part

[@jothain]

​@@Z-addor you just don't know how to use program 😊

[@Z-add]

@@jothain yes i surely don't know how to use underdeveloped software. I'm used to good quality software. I'm spoiled like that.

[@cahenr5045]

​@@Z-add I have been using path workbench to cut parts with my homemade CNC router and obtained good results.

[@321ooo123]

It's very, very rudimentary, though. Also doesn't support turning. Well, at least it's free.

[@WillStrickland]

I've been using mainline FreeCAD exclusive for the past 4 years and my workflow is pretty just hacks. Here are some tips I've stumbled on. Do everything you can in the first sketch. This is the only sketch that you know will work. Avoid any of the following unless it is the last step: make a sketch on a face, reference a geometry in a sketch, use a path/sweep. If you change any parameter you are more likely than not going to corrupt that feature and corrupt everything you did afterwards. At least it was the last operation you can delete and redo it with minimal blast radius. The one thing that works well for me to make FreeCAD work parametrically is to redraw key geometry needed starting from the origin in each sketch and reference the constraint value from previous features. You can avoid topology naming problem if you never reference topology.

[@MrEdwardhartmann]

I switched to FreeCad the first time Autodesk decided to drop the free use of fusion360 for hobbyist. And even though they relented and allowed hobbyist to continue using it for free, I did not want to take the chance that at some point in the future, they would just say - "you no longer qualify as a hobbyist - pay us or loose all you previous work". And I hated FreeCad for all the same reasons you mentioned. But eventually, I figured out how to use it and I can now knock out a simple design in a few minutes without much drama. I would not want to model a jet turban in freecad, but a case for a Raspberry Pie Zero is no problem.

[@anrstone]

I couldn't agree with this more. I have banged my head for hours trying to get a design going in FreeCAD and then swapped to Fusion and did the whole thing in 5 minutes. I really want to use FreeCAD but simply don't have the time to learn something so different and so involved sadly.

[@nath042]

I've made the swap myself recently since i am trying to get behind this whole FOSS idea. Took a little while to get used to but i feel I can make at around the same level as I used to with F360 now on FreeCAD.

[@clonkex]

If you're anything like me, at some point you'll try Fusion again and realise just how much garbage you had to put up with in FreeCAD. I'm 100% behind FOSS, but some FOSS projects just aren't good enough to replace commercial offerings, even for hobbyists. Blender is a shining example of the opposite; when I tried using commercial solutions after using Blender for years, I was astounded at just how tedious, quirky and downright stupid their interfaces were.

[@MNbenMN]

​​@@clonkex Second this! I keep switching back and forth. FreeCAD feels great in some ways, but Fusion360 just goes smoother (except when Fusion crashes, or refuses to update, or Autodesk has login/license validation issues).

[@brianmi40]

@@MNbenMN Smoother, right on into that $436 a year fee... FreeCAD has a never ending home with amateurs that can't, or don't want to pay for "a tiny bit smoother" when doing hobby/amateur, usually infrequent designs. Even just valuing your time at $20/hr., you'd have to "waste" 20+ hours a year doing CAD in FreeCAD just to BREAK EVEN with the annual cost... Trust me, I'm not wasting 20+ hours per year with FreeCAD! My average design in it takes less than 10 minutes and a lot of that is me noodling how I want it to be, not wrestling with making it happen in the tool at this point after about 15 hours experience in FreeCAD. But even conservatively, that means I'd have to do 240 designs per YEAR, with HALF the time wasted (5 minutes each) just to break even: 240 x 5 = 1,200 minutes, divided by 60 minutes in an hour = 20 hours

[@tommontgomery2674]

Reminds me of the cad experience I had while running cnc machines in a machine shop for years. We had access to Solidworks, Autocad and other high priced cad systems but they were too complicated for our quick use demands for making a lot of different types of CNC machines work at a moments notice. We didn't sit at the computer all day doing cad drawings like the engineers in the office, but we just used cad occasionally to help make the parts people wanted yesterday if not sooner.We always came back to the very simplified version of BobCad because we could hop on a computer and spit out a simple dimensioned drawing, work out some geometry, or even make a long and complicated g-code program in a reasonable amount of time without having to re-learn a bunch of complicated extra stuff we never needed. That all changed after Version 21 when Bobcad turned from something simple to a comparable product to Solidworks.

[@hanswurst9866]

FreeCAD was the first CAD program I ever used and while it was crazy in the beginning, many tutorial videos later I got the hang of it and I still exclusively use it today. I just hope the Linkstage3 version gets merged into the main branch a bit faster.

[@andrebonneau8738]

I use FreeCAD and I agree that the learning cure is steep at first and you have to work around the Topological Naming Problem , hopefully that will get fixed at some point , but for free software it's very usable once you learn your way around it. 😉

[@Coderjo.]

Oh man, that TNP... The first couple of times I hit that I was like "wtf?" and wound up having to start over because I didn't have a backup from before I did whatever completely broke everything. It sucks having to keep that in mind when working with it.

[@rsilvers129]

It’s actually a shallow learning curve. A steep one would mean that one rapidly learns in a short period of time.

[@MongrelShark]

@@Coderjo. its actually not hard to re-attach your sketches. It used to be a pain for me, but now its so fast I barely notice.

[@ZAPATTUBE]

Too Hard for Me!

[@whoguy4231]

Freecad !!! Yeah ... been using it for years and still learning. Learning curve is STEEP but I love it!!!

[@protonenfalter]

I do CAD on a (semi-)professional basis on and off for more than 20 years now and have worked with quite a few system - ranging from free to ultra-expensive industrial heavy weights. In my experience FreeCAD is a fantastic tool and the one I'm using daily for complex designs of commercial products. It is certainly not as polished as a CAD suite from a multi-billion-dollar company but it is robust, versatile and gets the job done for sure! You need to learn a few of its quirks but then it really provides a fast, consistent and predictable way to model your designs - much more so than some of the commercial suits I have worked with. E.g. the partitioned drawer can easily be modeled in a minute - no sweat. I tried the cup and it took me roughly 15 minutes to get similar results to what is shown in the video. On top of that you can access all the underlying mechanics through the extensive Python API. This helps a ton if you work on a special project and need a very specific feature. Good luck if you want to do that in Fusion360 or any other commercial product! 😃

[@glabifrons]

Glad to see someone using it professionally (even semi). I absolutely love FreeCAD. I'm in it more than I'm in games. Just to give you an idea of how much I've used it (more than a few are assemblies, not just individual parts): $ find CAD -iname \*.fcstd | wc -l 642

[@MMuraseofSandvich]

OK, one tip I've learned as a workaround for the temperamental part manipulation tools: Make a clone of the object you want to cut. This will create actual geometry that the tools expect, and allow the operation to actually go through in most cases. The drawback is that this will clutter up your workspace like nobody's business, there's no really good way of combining this and edit history modification without making FreeCAD unhappy, and you will feel like you need to take a shower after working on the model.

[@DenTilloZie]

my opinion on freecad before seeing the video. I have used freecad for a long time because im a big big opensource fanboy. but its just not as easy to use as some of the non opensource programs. ​its powerfull if you know what you are doing, but its a headache to use

[@garrettparmenter938]

Having used Fusion, Inventor, Solid works, recently Blender. I found the interface so difficult to use I simply gave up. I hope to use it as people have developed topology optimization and im certain other powerful plug-ins. I will have to develop my own patience first.

[@BOTmaster15]

Headache is best word here, like you can modify your project if you model it "correctly". Sometimes it doesnt want to work with something but more often than not it's user fault ;) (however sometimes closing.and opening file fixed error for me).

[@foldionepapyrus3441]

I don't think it really is a headache to use, just different enough you have to actually be willing to learn how to use it. In the same way OpenSCAD is a really really different to an extreme extent in use to any GUI CAD, but really powerful and a pretty natural fit for some parametric type models.

[@theninjascientist689]

Same here. I love FOSS and so I trudge on with FreeCAD but I do miss Solidworks. When I've got a little bit more time on my hands maybe I'll look into contributing to the project to help alleviate some of these issues.

[@zebarzebra]

I think most importantly people should watch one or two good tutorials before using the software. The Workflow simply is very different. Usually if you have done everything in sketches and then create you part you are good. The workflow of just adding to the 3d Objekt just doesn't work well with FreeCad. To be quite honest Thomas could have found that out easily. Of course most people won't like that approach with is reasonable it is old fashioned and using 3d shapes often helps your creativity.

[@michipeka9973]

As a pro CG artist, I had the same kind of problems with Blender for a very long time, but the software made huge progress and is really getting there... So I think I was able to jump into Freecad only because I had zero experience with other CAD softwares, also I just did relatively simple stuffs with it. But I agree sometimes you have to scratch your head much too hard for seemingly simple tasks.

[@kontoname]

Blender pre 2.8 was horrible and had the same open source issues. People just stuck in their way of thinking unwilling to make major changes. Luckily blender has changed and we can only hope FreeCAD get's together an equally talented team to turn it's development around.

[@michipeka9973]

@@kontoname It always cracks me up that they called their community site "Right-Click Select". They acknowledge their past mistakes - sort of... but that doesn't mean they apologize for it 😂

[@CyanOgilvie]

@@kontoname I would say that the pre 2.8 issues weren't open source issues, but rather closed source ones - they date from when it was an in-house closed source tool by the advertising company Not a Number. When that company closed the devs bought the rights to the source and released it as open source. It took a long time but the open source process eventually massaged out the derp, leaving us with a delightful (if still powerfully complex) tool today.

[@clonkex]

I used Blender 2.49b for many years because I didn't like the interface changes in 2.5. I loved it! I'd never used any commercial offerings so I didn't have any issues learning the quirky interface. Then I largely stopped using Blender for a few years, and when I came back to it 3-ish years ago it had magically transformed into a ridiculously clean and well-designed piece of software. It's probably the number one biggest success story in the FOSS world. Some people would argue Linux is, but the adoption of Blender among "normal people" is vastly higher than Linux and for me that's a much better metric of success.

[@notverygoodguy]

@@kontoname A lot of people say this but the interface didn't change THAT much in 2.8. Things got moved around a bit and it looks prettier but it is essentially the same. The massively important change was the default left click so that people trying Blender for the first time didn't just click all over the screen, watch a small red and white circle follow their clicks for no apparent reason and then close Blender in frustration agreeing with everyone saying it had a terrible interface.

[@tearandfix]

Hi Thomas. I've uploaded a video where I demonstrated how I recreated your part in FreeCAD. It is one of many ways how it can be done. I'm planning to create a similar video but with a realthunder fork of FreeCAD.

[@tearandfix]

I have uploaded a video showing modeling of the same part in Realthunder fork of FreeCAD. It is much easier than in the standard FreeCAD version.

[@Uika4ka]

Interesting

[@yurikslalom]

Yeah, it seems like realthunder fork is more understandable for fusion360 users

[@sdp8483]

FreeCAD plays nice with KiCAD due to an amazing open source FreeCAD plugin. That is the main reason I started to use it. As a hobbyist who releases my projects as open source using open source tools to create those projects makes the most sense. In the beginning like any new software tool I used it in anger but now I have a good workflow and V0.20 is way ahead of V0.18 when I started using it.

[@xhivo97]

KiCAD has a GREAT workflow and it's easy to use, the same cannot be said for FreeCAD.

[@astorMorisson]

I created some really complex parts with FreeCAD but I think the description as being "fragile" fits quite well. I had my parts fall apart a couple of times. I got non-descriptive error messages and I always keep backup version. I will not blame anybody for that. FreeCAD people work on what they want to work and hence you have a lot of features with various degrees of readiness. If people want something or want to improve something they can join the development. That is at the core of open source software. Also, there are things in FreeCAD that are due to limitations in the OpenCascade geometry kernel. It is way beyond the scope of FreeCAD to work on that part. Developing such a kernel is extremely hard and we can be lucky that there even is an open source kernel (even one with such great quality). However, it will always be behind the commercial offerings like Parasolid etc. which cost thousands of dollars per year just to be able to use them.

[@BaltimoreB1ll]

Realthunder branch rocks. I switched from F360 to FreeCAD Realthunder branch in January. I’m just about getting to grips with it now and can more or less fix a model when it throws a recompute error. I tend to stick with just the Part Design and Sketcher workbenches but also use Assembly3 on occasions. The Slic3r tools and Fasteners workbenches are useful. Must learn how to use the Tech Draw workbench sometime. But, it’s taken a lot of hours to get this far.

[@theneonbop]

I looked at his patreon and it sounds like he hopes to get all of the realthunder features into the regular branch in a few months.

[@jclosed2516]

@@theneonbop I would like that very much. I think it's always better to collaborate than to do a split. I must admit that the improvements in the Realthunder branch are substantial, and make using FreeCAD a lot more easy...

[@randomguy7253]

I think your criticisms are valid, and that one still needs much love for open source to invest the time to climb the steep learning curve (and descend into the valley of frustration). But FreeCAD (especially the RealThunder branch) is useable for everyday 3D printing use if you invest the effort.

[@ZAPATTUBE]

Too Hard for Me!

[@LapsedMemory]

I try FreeCAD every few years. The first time I tried it, my model kept disappearing. The last time I tried it was about 2 years ago. I went to create a box with 2 slots cut on perpendicular faces that intersect in the middle of the box. I could create the 1st slot fine, but when the second slot was cut, FreeCAD added a wall everywhere the slots intersected. I've always been hopeful this project will get to some maturity, so I will keep testing it out. I'm glad it exists, it just hasn't been able to live up to my testing as of yet.

[@KyleFalconer1]

This has been my experience with FreeCAD as well, and I want so badly to love and use it, but the friction is just too much to overcome.

[@satyandranath]

I started my CAD journey with freeCAD and stayed for the open source. Really like the range of functions, the only thing letting me down is the UX. You can see the modules have sort of their own logic on UX which just makes it like a learning a new tool overall when changing modules.

[@helixxharpell]

I've been an engineer for 34 yrs. A 2d CAD user for my 1st 3 yrs & a Solidworks user for the last 28 yrs. I've used I-DEAS, taught Inventor at the college level. My advice for any new CAD user would be this. Learn how to do both sketch-based and feature- based construction. Once you've become comfortable with both if those you can use any modeling tool. This gentleman is spot on with this video! Bravo sir! Great video!

[@ges7991]

A very good summary of what I found when using FreeCAD. It's tricky and does sometimes punish you... and you don't know why. My recommendation to eliminate many issues with FreeCad is: 1) Make a new body for Each Shape or "feature". 2) Make the New Body "Active" in the tree 3) Make the New body origin Visible, and don't use another body's origin. This has helped me to make clean complicated parts and which eliminates the naming problem.

[@ashleycawley5816]

Thank you. As someone quite technical I have maybe put a hundred hours or more into learning FreeCAD but I still hit problems and bugs, even when trying to follow best practices, it makes you feel stupid, but seeing this reassures me that it "isn't all my fault".

[@ZAPATTUBE]

Too Hard for Me.

[@briannewman6216]

When using Freecad I find myself continually running into roadblocks. It can be very frustrating. I think the concept is great and would like to master it, even if that is going to require a serious number of hours of work.

[@matwyder4187]

It does take a considerable amount of time to learn, but once you get the basics, it's a very capable tool. I had both the advantage and a disadvantage of being a newbie to CAD, not having the expectations and habits of people with lots of experience with other software, same time without any clue how to approach a problem. Luckily the community is large enough that there's a very good chance there are plenty of resources to solve a specific issue. Lots of great training videos on KZbin as well, slowly and steadily it starts to click together. I can't tell how the learning curve compares to the others, but I'm quite sure nobody got familiar with an advanced modeling tool in a single week. Kudos to all the devs, keep up the good work!

[@signummotors]

Judging by the title, I was expecting a lot of praise - after watching it - it would have left me with more questions than answers... Luckily I was searching for a CAD program for a while, weighing all options and trying out some tools; once I've finally got few 3D printers - I had to decide to go with something. And I did. FreeCAD it is. And it will stay as my main go to tool - granted, I will need to learn a lot, but considering it's a great tool - that is offered FREE - I'm not going to complain. Ever. If we want it better, we should participate, but given the prices of the so called 'good tools' on the market, there will never be a question as to should I learn to use FreeCAD, or should I spend couple thousand every year just for the sake of it and for a bit of comfort. Thank you FreeCAD team. Thank you for mentioning it and making it more viral by creating a video - people who just seen the thumbnail and the title will definitely download it and try.

[@jacobahl8317]

Tried getting into FreeCAD for years. I've designed a few widgets in it, but the beginning hurdles of convenient workflow hold me back. In fusion 360 I can do whatever I want quickly. For FreeCAD I have to look up a tutorial on how to do simple things.

[@1pcfred]

Fusion 360 exists to sabotage the FLOSS efforts. It takes the wind out of the sails of any free project by offering a "free" closed product.

[@FuriousImp]

Did you try Blender with the CAD extension?

[@321ooo123]

Same here. Finally I gave up and bought a subscription for F360. That hurt, but I decided I prefer to spend my time creating models, instead of researching on the interwebs how to achieve seemingly simple tasks in FreeCAD. Inability to use geometry from another sketch on a new sketch (aka projection) is still inexplicable to me. There was a tutorial video that suggested "just redraw the sketch", I almost cried.

[@1pcfred]

@@321ooo123 FreeCAD is only at version 0.20 now. Which for a project over 20 years old is slow development. The reason Autocad did Fusion 360 was to knock the wind out of the sails of the FLOSS movement and it worked. Really the core team that develops FreeCAD are their own worst enemies though. Germans, am I right?

[@Rubafix989]

I love freecad but it has it's problem, but the main one is being fixed which is the topological naming issue. As an open source alternative there is a blender addon called CadSketcher.

[@haydenlee8332]

I am so glad to see a video with such many views that honestly goes over the difficulties and unintuitiveness of using FreeCAD, without just going emotionally hateful. (I am kind of guilty of this becaue the last time I tried using it back in 2019, I was so frustrated while just trying to model one of the simplest shapes ever!! I rage quit really hard and had to begrudgingly return to Fusion360...) THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO. The FOSS community needs to hear these constructive criticism! Someone like me would have just taken my frustrated emotions take the best of me... I'd love to return to Open Source crossplatform softwares again someday too!

[@oseaghin]

A fascinating review. The word "fragile" sums up my experience exactly.

[@tilation3853]

Im loving FreeCAD and am glad to see you supporting it. Cool! I am actually even using it together with blender for professional Manufacturing in the German Industry. Some Colleges are even following me because of the License conditions and this fully featured Software.

[@kontoname]

So that's why all countries get ahead of us in manufacturing, because people are still stuck with outdated junk like Catia and FreeCAD. Good to know. Working in IT for automotive myself I already kind of knew but I didn't suspect anyone outside of automotive would go that route on their own will. Good software doesn't change the user - it shapes and conforms to the users in a streamlined and instinctive way.

[@1pcfred]

FreeCAD is missing an important feature for me. The program can't export in inches. Least it couldn't the last time I tried it. I don't hold out any hope of it ever being fixed.

[@zebarzebra]

@@kontoname Lame.. they are talking about that since 50 years. The truth is Germany was never ahead of he rest of the world in many areas, but we were always in the top 3 in some areas and we still are. So from my point of view we are doing pretty well.

[@tmartin9482]

​@@1pcfred As we don't hold out any hope for those laggard countries to ever convert to the metric system...

[@1pcfred]

@@tmartin9482 there's two kinds of countries on Earth. Ones that use the metric system and the one that's put men on the Moon. Don't you forget it.

[@PeterHertel]

I love open source and use it exclusively for all my software choices (when there's an option). But I've tried freecad every few years and I just can't get a good feeling for it. I can most of the time do what I want to do in OpenSCAD anyway and like the approach so much better. I've experimented a bit with CAD sketcher for blender which shows promise, but is still not intuitive to me personally. They just released a new version I haven't gotten around to yet.

[@KevinErhardt]

I started with FreeCAD 0.19, luckily there were a lot of tutorials on KZbin (some in German), the documentation is more confusing then helpful. Creating simple models it's working fine, but soon your model's became a bit more complex, then the throubles begin, I often got stuck, because the software was not doing I asked for. After a couple of months of time consuming, frustrating try and errors I switched to Fusion 360 (personal licence), I quickly adopted as I understood the basics of modelling beforehand, I also used video tutorials and the documentation to adopt. The only thing I'm missing is Linux support.

[@RedPillSurvival]

It's always better to work with a product that has a company behind it. There's money to be lost if those bugs and confusion persists. And Fusion 360 paid is what - $32 per month? How much is your time worth? How much frustration are you willing to tolerate each month in order to save $32?

[@fnordingers]

I'm using the realthunder branch and I love it. I do all my things in it. Takes some time to get used to, but I love the freedom and the idea that it will never have a subscription

[@dantheman1998]

What are the difference from the made build?

[@JATMN]

Thank you for doing this video. I tried to move to FreeCAD completely a few years ago.. Having a background in Solidworks & Fusion360 I find myself able to stumble my way thru various CAD offerings including SolidEdge and a few others which have vastly different interface layouts and approaches to the same things. When I tried FreeCAD.. I found it completely unintuitive ran into all the same issues you did.. and that was like 2.5yrs ago. I spent a few days just trying to understand the "FreeCAD" way of doing things, it just wasn't logical to me. As you noted its a tool that tries to do everything possible, but not so great at what it does do. I hope you don't get too much hate for this. When I was sharing my experiences about this on Twitter during my testing.. the FreeCAD devs and community just came after me and basically told me if I think it should be different change it myself. If I couldn't find a guide somewhere on how to do something it was my job to make that guide (after I some how managed to figure out how to do said thing without a guide?) Again Very good video Tom!

[@FranckJousseaume]

FreeCAD changed a lot the last couple of years, the community grew up and there are many resources and tutorials

[@JATMN]

@@FranckJousseaume well as I mentioned.. the issues Tom ran into.. was same sort of things I ran into back then.

[@mealroyale]

Please keep in mind that those devs are not employees. They don't owe you anything and if you get too rude with them they can and will just roll their eyes at you.

[@JATMN]

@@mealroyale which is why rather than pulling my hair out trying to use the software or trying to get mad at the devs.. i just don't use it at all.

[@louis-lau]

As a dev you're told that open source is beautiful and people will contribute. The reality is almost no one will contribute, but they will complain. After a while this gets tiring, and you get less helpful. It's not ideal, but I get it. It's reality.

[@hebijirik]

For the very reasons you mentioned at the start of the video I chose FreeCAD when looking for my very first 3D drawing tool mainly for 3D printing. As a result I probably have less bias in terms of expecting something to work in some way because it does in some commercial CADs. I would agree that it can be frustrating to design something and FreeCAD just refuses to do the thing for which you just saw the tutorial video made by someone who figured out. And you have to look for a hacky workaround like making the whole rotation and deleting half, like you showed. For me who never knew the other tools this beeing free and open source still makes it worth it. As a tip for the example you have shown with the box, tip maybe usefull to others who are into 3D printing: in addition to the workbenches you mentioned (Part, Sketch) also Draft is usefull and I mainly use it for the Array tool. In your example I would go to Part, make a cube the size of one of the spaces in your spice holder, go to Draft, make a linear array of those cubes spaced wall thickness appart. Same for the other size of hollow space. Than bakc to Part, make a big cube that encompasses both arrays, make a boolean Cut of those arrays from the big cube and done. Maybe throw some small chamfer on all edges to make it nicer. I think that for such things FreeCAD can be fast if you are used to a workflow that works for you and it gives you the precision something like Tinkercad would not, or not easily. Where I find FreeCAD hard to use is making organic looking curved things. Like a frame for a carbon fibre recumbent bike. Getting the long "swan neck" shape of it to look right is difficult and tedious.

[@aaronkeler7432]

The organic stuff is hard to do even in professional parametric CAD software like Creo or Solidworks. That's why the mentioned German car manufacturers often use Catia for the car body and interiors.

[@Arkonzm]

A few weeks ago i decided to design a case for a pcb. I used free cad. 3 years ago i had cad with inventor at university and did pretty well. Using free cad was just tedius. Im so happy, that you feel the same!

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

I come from a similar background (ME with experience in solidworks, creo, fusion, autocad, etc) and had a similar experience with FreeCAD. It's frustrating because it seems to me that CAD is the biggest barrier to entry for so many DIYers, be it 3D printing, CNC, etc. If we could solve the "hobbyist CAD" problem so many people could create so many more beautiful things. Like you I'll keep checking into this, I really hope for the best for this project. 👍

[@Voyajer.]

I really need a "freecad for inventor/fusion users" guide

[@clytle374]

As a Linux user who had some experience with mastercam decades ago, I've been using freecad since 2013. So I learned on it. Watching a few recent videos is critical to getting somewhere other than frustrated. I can get what I need done with it, and not having any issues with licensing or costs. It's probably worse when you know how to use something else.

[@jimw1266]

I agree... LOTS of great free tutorials! WATCH THEM. Your life will be easier!

[@sitnstill4now]

I love this video. Probably the most useful video concerning freeCAD excluding tutorials.

[@typorrhea]

I started learning on FreeCAD recently so I don't know any better & I really like it. Took some time to get used to and it is frustrating at times but it's free and I've never run into any real blockers in my simple designs.

[@QEngineering]

I think every engineer/designer should give FreeCAD a try. At first it was really confusing but as I learned how to work around those limitations I gave me a bigger insight to how CAD software work in the background. Taking those lessons back to Catia/SolidWorks made my models a lot stronger and the designs much more robust.

[@JonathanKayne]

You pretty much summarized what I hate about freecad. I just wish it was more tolerant to mistakes and let you select regions like how fusion or SOLIDWORKS does it. It annoys me because I end up having to jump to my windows partition when I want to do anything remotely complex when I want to use Linux entirely

[@AgentDexter47]

Same as Thomas said, in my experience i have used Sketchup, Catia, Solidworks, fusion, and onshape. Once I knew a single program, I could use any of them. Sure you get used to the shortcuts of one program or some advanced features are easier, but the workflow is the same. I tried FreeCAD at one moment when Fusion announced changes, for a simple part, and it ended up being faster to make in TinkerCad

[@leftaroundabout]

“I just wish it was more tolerant to mistakes” - That's of course understandable from a user perspective, but there are very good reasons against going this route if you're an open source project with severely limited dev resources. See, a program that slaps you with an error message is relatively easy to debug, and it'll be relatively clear what behaviour eventually should be converged on so you don't need a lot of planning overhead. Whereas _being forgiving_ is actually very dangerous: if you try to be clever in a way that circumvents the issue for the first instance the problem turns up, chances are you'll cause complete havoc a little further down the road in 20 other similar scenarios, and each of them takes many times more effort to fix those knock-on effects than it would have been to squelch the problem right where it happened. For a company with big pockets to pay developers to spend a couple of weeks to get each of these instances right eventually, that's not a big deal - but for somebody co-developing a CAD system mainly for their own use, it's completely impractical.

[@MrKuncol]

@@leftaroundabout It may be easier for devs, but in it's current form it's pretty much useless for anyone except it's own devs.

[@BobWidlefish]

@@MrKuncol everyone except it’s own devs and the thousands of people who use it daily. Lots of good tools have steep learning curves. There’s no need to catastrophize it, it’s not that bad.

[@KyrychenkoAnton]

@@BobWidlefish zero-description error messages like "Error: code 143" that I got constantly using FreeCAD has nothing to do with "good discipline" or learning curves, its just bad software. Especially when you prioritize adding million new features and workbenches instead of fixing bugs. Remind me, how many years realthunder's pr is not merged at this point?

[@NelsonCastillo]

This is what I use for 3d printing and CNC jobs. With time I've learned to make the models more stable but sometimes I just delete everything and start from scratch. It's nice to use the spreadsheet for parametric models, they not always work for me but this is useful.

[@raise-project]

Totally agree. Ended up with the follwoing Fusion aquivalent : Solvespace, Blender, Kiri:Moto, Freecad (Simulation, FIllets, loft, Pipe similar)

[@decootubization]

Some features and implementation is at first view really strange. But after some time you can do a lot with freeCAD. I personally love how good it is in importing step files and mesh creation options. 3d Text creation is not bad (better than in CATIA). Also gears creator is nice. Best approach for quick and nice work for me is using parametric & direct modelling in part creation process. ASM and DRW seems to be at really early stage of development (unfortunately).

[@bongi6811]

For me FreeCAD behaves quite intuively because it's the only CAD program I've ever used in the last two years since I got my 3d printer, so it's just what I expect of a CAD program. I don't know how it behaves for larger projects since I do this as a hobby and havent gotten past maybe a dozen relatively simple parts in one project. The major errors for which you have to backtrack quite far to fix them happen evey once in a while, but overall im quite happy with FreeCAD.

[@collie147]

FreeCADs convert to solid is brilliant. It's the main reason I use it!

[@michaelplaczek9385]

I always liked FreeCAD and saw potential in it, thanks for making it more popular!

[@qualifiednot]

solvespace is much simpler in terms of functionality than freecad and I would say pretty similar in capability to 123d design, although I haven't touched it in like 2 years and am now much better at modeling than I was back then. 123d design was my first cad and it kicked ass for teaching the basics.

[@peter2uat]

I have yet to find some design where 123Design can not fulfill my ideas. Yes, it has some quirks and sometimes gives me some frustration, but for my modest technical 'designs' of LGB-sized locos and running hardware and the usual homeware stuff it is unbeatable, quick and easy to use. The UI is mostly selfexplaining, so after a few hours of learning you are able to have your first parts ready for printing. I certainly would not expect it to be for advanced or commercial use.

[@Viper12091]

I use FreeCAD for pretty much everything I'm designing for my printer and I can understand you find this difficult to use. It requires a lot of knowing how it will react beforehand to properly work with it. Your over constrained sketch is the perfect example as FreeCAD tries to apply horizontal/vertical constraints automatically to lines and but also tries to constraint the endpoints. So if you draw a line snapped onto the X axis you have the two points fixing it onto the axis and the line will end up horizontal, which the points already constraint it to be. Usually I end up drawing my sketches extra wonky so I can apply just the constraints I want/need 🤣 In the end I really like FreeCAD but I'm an embedded-C programmer, so I'm used to the "do it right, or don't get anything remotely working". I really would love some better working cutting tools in FreeCAD, though :(

[@magnusbeischer1264]

Just use "Auto remove redundants" when sketching to avoid over constrained sketches.

[@allisterbullock213]

Good work Thomas but only because I agree (but I'm a CAD noob aside from PCBs). Fortunately the YT channel "4 Axis Printing" has explained the FreeCad way of performing your required operation in an open response to this video. I'm so glad that you are both able to contribute to the continuation of the tool by bringing more attention to it.

[@clutteredchicagogarage2720]

I use FreeCAD and I like it, although I agree that there are some quirks. I hope it continues to be actively developed. It has indeed improved over the years. I found that my ability to design complex things became easier once I started to use the spreadsheet workbench to parameterize my designs. In the past, when I just had to design a simple object to 3d-print, I would mostly just use the part and part-design workbenches. When I had to design a 2-story playhouse with a pitched roof for my daughter last summer, I found that it was very helpful to define a whole spreadsheet of parameters to use repeatedly. My playhouse design was then a collection of parts. I'm a software developer (who has used linux systems for the past 20 years) not a structural engineer or architect or mechanical engineer. For some of my freecad work, I've written python code to define some of the parts. I like that about FreeCAD. I've written functions to build parts for a given set of parameters. For example, I built a project years ago with steel punched tubing. The tubing has a square cross section that's 1 inch. There are holes along the length of the tubes spaced out every 1 inch, and each hole has something like a 3/8in diameter (maybe it's 5/16in... I don't remember exactly). Well, I found that it was very very helpful for me to write a function to say something like make_tube("xz", eight_inches, offset_2_inches), and I did that repeatedly to create my project, which consisted of a lot of steel tubes that ended up being bolted together to construct the frame. Once all the parts were laid out for that project, I did go and adjust things a little bit in the GUI, but it was quite productive for me to roughly define most of the parts of my project in code first.

[@mindfulmunchkin1215]

Great video, i personally hate subscription models and cloud computing. I just want to pay once and enjoy the program.

[@kurtfrancis4621]

Exactly. For those of us that've worked in CAD for years, we don't mind fronting a few hundred, maybe even $500 for a piece of software that can last us for 5 years as long as we OWN that software AND the files that are generated. We can choose of FREE WILL to upgrade software versions or not based on our NEEDS. Most of us are reasonable human beings that recognize that it takes resources to produce quality software and don't mind contributing to it (I think). The keys are, in priority of importance: 1) Ownership of software AND all files generated from it. 2) Ease of learning & use. 3) Software support. Am I correct, folks?

[@andymclanza]

I have to admit my previuos experience was in SolidWorks and FreeCAD was...tough! But now i'm quite confidet with it. It requires a LOT of patience and dedication BUT i do not have to rely on crazy commercial changes . I still remeber when Autodesk cancelled Mental Ray for Maya and, suddenly, i had to change my preset....

[@cooldawg2009]

Thanks so much for this detailed explanation. I have not seen this anywhere else

[@Nikolai508]

I literally just started learning FreeCad as my first CAD experience today.

[@cheesedoff-with4410]

If you're getting stuck have a look at the MangoJelly KZbin tutorials. Joko does good ones too.

[@FrankOpmeer]

Use the realthunder fork of freecad. That solves a lot of your listed errors

[@liquid-stoe]

For your problem of spitting in half at around 7:30, a clean solution would be to use a datum plane in the part design work-bench and create a pocket with "through all" option Actually you should dig using the part design work-bench only here, Part workbench is for simple parts and CSG whereas " PartDesign Workbench provides a more modern workflow to constructing shapes" (freecad wiki) Hope it helps, also found Joko Engineering tutorials helped me a lot for designing parts

[@rok1475]

A common affliction among freshmen law students is to use at least 7 words when 2 or 3 will do. Young engineers have something similar - let’s use all possible functions and features in CAD software, not because it is necessary, but because they are there and they can spend more time tweaking the 3D model. Just draw the full cross-section profile of the pot and rotate it 180 degrees. Done. One sketch, one operation. No offsets, no slicing, nothing else needed. You can even round the corners not to need to chamfer them later. Someone else posted an explanation for all the problems you had with your design in FC, but fundamentally you I’ve complicated the design for no reason.

[@bobmirror7164]

I got tired of CAD program advertisers saying "FREE DOWN LOAD" only to find out it is a limited 30 trial with "handcuffs." So I learned FreeCAD and Open SCAD and never looked back.

[@DARKEASC]

You should have started with Realthunder's fork. It was amazing when migrating from fusion 360.

[@ChrisMuncy]

I could sense the frustration and tension Tom. It came across in the video quite well, and evening knowing that it was scripted... you really do have it bottled up and ready to explode. From one of my all time favorite sit-coms: "Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together."

[@thealmightysnark5878]

I love FreeCAD. Got frustrated with Fusions increasing limitations and figured I would dedicate to switching. I did run into many of the same issues as you did but anger at the rest of the CAD ecosystem got me through! You are correct though, it has hurdles to overcome for new people! The best way I can help is donate a bit of money every now and then.

[@leogray1091]

I was looking around for so long for a free and open cad software. I know freecad from long ago, just never feel it have the rich enough feature and UI for power use. I'm glad you are giving these free options more attention, and I hope this will help the freecad community to catch up a lot faster

[@vavilon7109]

FreeCad was my first CAD software that I used. I spent a month working on my project thinking that it is going slow because it is a new discipline and it would take some time for me to get better. Once my project started becoming more complex FreeCad started overwhelming my computer making further designing impossible. I then learned about Fusion 360, spent a weekend rebuilding the project and never had resource bottleneck issues in CAD again. I am glad Fusion 360 exists. I love this software 😊

[@Borgedesigns]

As you said a slightly improved 123d design would be great. It did the basics really well but not being able to hide parts or sketches was really limiting. A section analysis tool would have been nice as well.

[@VAXHeadroom]

I still use 123d all the time. You can hide both sketches and objects either individually or all of them. I found it to be super fast for simple things in a way that Fusion never could. It's basically 'abandonware' so I have no compunctions about using it.

[@zombieno1]

@@VAXHeadroom I use 123D as well and it is awesome to do basic 3D models. I have pushed it to it's limits a few times. It's like a super big brother of TinkerCAD. I wish Autodesk would bring it back because I really liked Fusion360 but I only need 5% of what it can do which is 5x more than 123D lol.

[@VAXHeadroom]

@@zombieno1 I have a couple of videos on my channel on designing with it - I did the Sea Dragon rocket and the LADEE spacecraft both of which I 3D printed. You can't get too big with it or it totally bogs down, but it's really fast for small stuff.

[@sammorris2721]

FreeCAD rocks! I use it as my go to CAD program that I use to make my 3D prints.

[@TyroneDamShewlaces]

The genius term Tom used to describe FreeCAD is "Friction". I have been wanting to like FreeCAD for a few years but haven't had the gumption to devote the time it takes to wrap my head around it I guess, so I keep falling back on a very old version of AutoCAD for my drawing (Mostly 2D stuff). Learning that verson of AutoCAD was painful for me too, but I had the time back then to devote to the learning and eventually soaked up its paradigm, which unfortunately doesn't apply to much of anything these days. So I'm stuck in a historical rut. I hope the devs polish it enough to shallow up the learning curve enough in the coming years. I agree that working out a robust core which would click with new users would benefit both these new users and the software team as well. Maybe "wish in one hand", etc., but I hope... Otherwise, maybe I'll just find the time someday to buckle down and figure out where my head needs to be to have it click for me.