coming from a company that used solidworks, i’ve always found trying to use freecad infuriating, even moreso after onshape came out and i saw what could be done even in a web browser. but seeing as it’s foss, i’ll keep trying it every release.
I used SW professionally for years before I retired and SW was suddenly not free to use for me anymore. Personally, I found the switch to FreeCAD was pretty easy for me. But the ease or struggle to learn something new varies a lot between people.
Best I can tell you is to forget everything you “know” from SW as best you can. And when you get frustrated that what you are doing in FreeCAD doesn’t work like SW, try to remember we ain’t in Kansas anymore Toto. That’s how I had to approach things.
Same boat. After using Soldworks everything else feels soo unpolished. But I’ve tossed Photoshop for Gimp and it’s getting easier with time, so I’ll make this work too.
It’s improving faster. It’s still a frustrating, crashy experience, but it’s getting better quickly, hopefully it reached critical mass and will do Blender.
I’m at about 130 models in FC 1.0 and have yet to see a crash. There are things TinkerCAD can do that Fusion 360 cannot, like import and edit a large STL.
Come on this just seem disingenuous, or extremely lucky. It’s great it’s out there but calling it stable is not one of them. Yesterday my freecad crashed for just closing a sketch that I didn’t even change and now all edge/face references are broken. (anyone a tip how to easily fix that? Doing it manually takes ages)
Yeah I find it hard to believe. Maybe you’re just sticking to a safe subset of features. I don’t know. Didn’t mean to berate you or anything. But I have had so many corrupted saves and random crashes I’m starting to more and more use openSCAD.
I had one or two crashes in the two years of frequent use (few times a week for multiple hours) on arch linux, lately I’ve been using weekly appimages and they crash a lot more.
I’ve always used the stable AppImages, on Fedora previously, Bazzite now, the crashes have reduced, but they’re still frequent, especially (but not exclusively) when working on large assemblies.
I think that it’s under very active development right now so that’s might be the source of the instability. IIRC there are alternative assembly workbenches that are more stable.
Reading this I can’t tell if you are talking about solidworks or freeCAD. JK but man solidworks is still one of the buggiest programs. If you use solidworks though the Solidworks error report screen is just part of the experience. Still I believe the gold standard for design software out there over NX, AutoCAD, and CATIA.
I went from SOLIDWORKS to FreeCAD and I miss the former a lot, I think I’m objectively 5 times slower on FreeCAD, but alas, SOLIDWORKS is not supported on Linux and not open source, so I must endure.
I’ve never had professional experience with CAD software and tried both onshape and freecad at the same time just before fc1.0 release, onshape for some reason was like using iphone or something like that while freecad was just ok. There are frustrating limitations and some things are broken and require workarounds true.
I’ve both used CAD software professionally and worked on CAD software as a developer, and I also find FreeCAD weirdly frustrating. It’s not the crashes; it’s something about the workflow.
Yes, I would like to use freecad. And for reference I love blender and use it almost daily. The freecad interface and work flow just kind of bounce me off them so far. I can sculpt, model, paint, rig and edit video in blender. Right now getting started making a basic part in freecad seems like black magic.
Maybe your brain just isn’t wired to use it(yet), my experience with blender and other 3d modeling software was like black magic, and cad software was at least transparent.
Possible. In free cads defense I started learning blender in 1996. Didn’t really get proficient till 2012 lol. Though I have used AutoCAD fine. But that was way back in 1994 under DOS.
coming from a company that used solidworks, i’ve always found trying to use freecad infuriating, even moreso after onshape came out and i saw what could be done even in a web browser. but seeing as it’s foss, i’ll keep trying it every release.
I used SW professionally for years before I retired and SW was suddenly not free to use for me anymore. Personally, I found the switch to FreeCAD was pretty easy for me. But the ease or struggle to learn something new varies a lot between people.
Best I can tell you is to forget everything you “know” from SW as best you can. And when you get frustrated that what you are doing in FreeCAD doesn’t work like SW, try to remember we ain’t in Kansas anymore Toto. That’s how I had to approach things.
Good Luck! I’m pullin’ for ya!
Same. It is crazy how much progress they are making now.
Same boat. After using Soldworks everything else feels soo unpolished. But I’ve tossed Photoshop for Gimp and it’s getting easier with time, so I’ll make this work too.
It’s improving faster. It’s still a frustrating, crashy experience, but it’s getting better quickly, hopefully it reached critical mass and will do Blender.
I’m at about 130 models in FC 1.0 and have yet to see a crash. There are things TinkerCAD can do that Fusion 360 cannot, like import and edit a large STL.
Come on this just seem disingenuous, or extremely lucky. It’s great it’s out there but calling it stable is not one of them. Yesterday my freecad crashed for just closing a sketch that I didn’t even change and now all edge/face references are broken. (anyone a tip how to easily fix that? Doing it manually takes ages)
Ok. So apparently I did get crashes and never realized it. Thanks Lemmy!
Yeah I find it hard to believe. Maybe you’re just sticking to a safe subset of features. I don’t know. Didn’t mean to berate you or anything. But I have had so many corrupted saves and random crashes I’m starting to more and more use openSCAD.
Maybe it’s the Linux build? What are your running?
I had one or two crashes in the two years of frequent use (few times a week for multiple hours) on arch linux, lately I’ve been using weekly appimages and they crash a lot more.
I’ve always used the stable AppImages, on Fedora previously, Bazzite now, the crashes have reduced, but they’re still frequent, especially (but not exclusively) when working on large assemblies.
As in assembly workbench?
Yeah
I think that it’s under very active development right now so that’s might be the source of the instability. IIRC there are alternative assembly workbenches that are more stable.
Reading this I can’t tell if you are talking about solidworks or freeCAD. JK but man solidworks is still one of the buggiest programs. If you use solidworks though the Solidworks error report screen is just part of the experience. Still I believe the gold standard for design software out there over NX, AutoCAD, and CATIA.
I went from SOLIDWORKS to FreeCAD and I miss the former a lot, I think I’m objectively 5 times slower on FreeCAD, but alas, SOLIDWORKS is not supported on Linux and not open source, so I must endure.
I recommend watching that channel, because that guy is faster in FreeCAD than I could ever be in Fusion360.
What channel?
Edit: Oh, right, OP is actually a video link. I just went directly to the comments here.
I’ve never had professional experience with CAD software and tried both onshape and freecad at the same time just before fc1.0 release, onshape for some reason was like using iphone or something like that while freecad was just ok. There are frustrating limitations and some things are broken and require workarounds true.
I’ve both used CAD software professionally and worked on CAD software as a developer, and I also find FreeCAD weirdly frustrating. It’s not the crashes; it’s something about the workflow.
Yes, I would like to use freecad. And for reference I love blender and use it almost daily. The freecad interface and work flow just kind of bounce me off them so far. I can sculpt, model, paint, rig and edit video in blender. Right now getting started making a basic part in freecad seems like black magic.
Maybe your brain just isn’t wired to use it(yet), my experience with blender and other 3d modeling software was like black magic, and cad software was at least transparent.
Possible. In free cads defense I started learning blender in 1996. Didn’t really get proficient till 2012 lol. Though I have used AutoCAD fine. But that was way back in 1994 under DOS.