Back in college, I had a few classes on CAD (mostly for engineering design), and I became decently proficient with CATIA, SolidWorks, and Autodesk Inventor. Now that I’m getting into 3D printing, I’m coming back to CAD and finding my skills pretty rusty.

I plan to use FreeCAD as my main tool. Could anyone please recommend some tutorials that I can complete that would give me a solid working knowledge of FreeCAD and help me brush up on CAD in general?

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    2 days ago

    Meanwhile, you can use FreeCAD for whatever the hell you want, forever, with no one looking over your shoulder.

    I know which avenue I’d much rather take, quirks of the software be damned.

    • varyingExpertise@feddit.orgEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      In my experience I have two possible decision paths: Do something using a commercial solution, OnShape in my case or try to do something using FreeCAD, get nowhere, look up tutorials, get somewhere but nowhere near what I need, give up, everything collects dust in the corner.

      I get the free software idea and spirit, but I’d rather actually be able to just draw and print things I need. Between work, having a house, friends, voluntary firefighting, building automation for tasks in our little village and everything else the day only has about 24 hours and I can’t just cut sleep anymore as I did in my twenties.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        To each their own, but I have been able to make FreeCAD do everything I needed it to do, sometimes at the beginning with a short trip to the forums or watching a youtube video. I didn’t have to lose any sleep over it. It wasn’t any different than learning any other piece of software.

        I dabbled with several (pirated) commercial CAD packages in the late '90’s and early 2000’s and I honestly don’t find FreeCAD to be any more byzantine than any of those. I think the oft-repeated canard that “FreeCAD is impossible to use” is no longer based on reality.

        • varyingExpertise@feddit.orgEnglish
          13·
          2 days ago

          The point is: With OnShape, I’m able to wing it. Scan something, load the STL, define a few planes throughout the whole thing, freehand a few lines, extrude, offset here and there for clearance, print, forget. With FreeCAD I need to do it correctly and, as I just need a physical thing, I just don’t have the patience to find out what correctly would mean.