The recent 1.0 release is actually very good. It is probably better at this point than some of the entry level commercial options and most importantly compared to those is not intentionally hobbled in any way.
The time for everyone to stop parroting how “everyone knows” that FreeCAD is unusable is… now. You can go ahead and delete that one; it’s time to learn a new soundbyte.
Come on. The 1.0 release is a huge milestone, but saying it’s better than the entry level commercial options is just disingenuous.
I have actually switched over to it because I run a small 3D printing business as a side income, which isn’t nearly profitable enough to afford an onshape license, and although Fusion360 has an affordable startup license it simply won’t work on Linux and my hackintosh laptop isn’t powerful enough for cad.
It is at a point where it is very usable if you are willing to invest the time needed to learn it, but the learning curve is much, much steeper than that of OnShape or Fusion360, especially if it is your first CAD program. There is also a huge lack of beginner tutorials for it, and the documentation is intended for advanced users, which complicates the learning curve even further, because Fusion360 and OnShape have a huge amount of beginner tutorials for them.
For a hobbyist that just wants to model a few things and not sell them I would always recommend OnShape or Fusion360 over FreeCAD, or even Tinkercad if said person just wants to model extremely simple things.
Yes. The 1.0 release was in November. That Ondsel fork in your video was based on, I believe, the 0.22 version.
The 1.0 release actually prompted Ondsel to shut down entirely, as they are now largely redundant and attempting to monetize a FOSS program was probably doomed from the start anyway…
Nah it’s not you, FreeCAD is perfectly usable for something like the above referenced knob but even mid-size assemblies really have problems. I personally find the workflow to be bad and irritating beyond my ability to express in words and I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be as a new user to work it out for yourself while at the same time getting used to thinking of objects as collections of operations. It’s a great lightweight program for people who already know what they’re doing and that value FOSS, though. 1.0 really fixed a ton of the issues, but it still has the “Blender UX” problem that seems to plague all big FOSS projects…
But it’s got a long way to go before it’s at usable as the others. Definitely not a good place to start learning cad.
No, it doesn’t.
The recent 1.0 release is actually very good. It is probably better at this point than some of the entry level commercial options and most importantly compared to those is not intentionally hobbled in any way.
The time for everyone to stop parroting how “everyone knows” that FreeCAD is unusable is… now. You can go ahead and delete that one; it’s time to learn a new soundbyte.
Come on. The 1.0 release is a huge milestone, but saying it’s better than the entry level commercial options is just disingenuous.
I have actually switched over to it because I run a small 3D printing business as a side income, which isn’t nearly profitable enough to afford an onshape license, and although Fusion360 has an affordable startup license it simply won’t work on Linux and my hackintosh laptop isn’t powerful enough for cad.
It is at a point where it is very usable if you are willing to invest the time needed to learn it, but the learning curve is much, much steeper than that of OnShape or Fusion360, especially if it is your first CAD program. There is also a huge lack of beginner tutorials for it, and the documentation is intended for advanced users, which complicates the learning curve even further, because Fusion360 and OnShape have a huge amount of beginner tutorials for them.
For a hobbyist that just wants to model a few things and not sell them I would always recommend OnShape or Fusion360 over FreeCAD, or even Tinkercad if said person just wants to model extremely simple things.
Is it much different from 7 months ago?
https://youtu.be/J--QVhGheP4 https://youtu.be/p8Pk1ayx6LQ
Yes. The 1.0 release was in November. That Ondsel fork in your video was based on, I believe, the 0.22 version.
The 1.0 release actually prompted Ondsel to shut down entirely, as they are now largely redundant and attempting to monetize a FOSS program was probably doomed from the start anyway…
That’s good to know, I guess I’ll give it a try again.
Nah it’s a great place to start learning, it’s super easy to start modelling your first simple models in part design.
It’s the more complex designs where it starts to struggle (or maybe I’m just bad idk)
Nah it’s not you, FreeCAD is perfectly usable for something like the above referenced knob but even mid-size assemblies really have problems. I personally find the workflow to be bad and irritating beyond my ability to express in words and I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be as a new user to work it out for yourself while at the same time getting used to thinking of objects as collections of operations. It’s a great lightweight program for people who already know what they’re doing and that value FOSS, though. 1.0 really fixed a ton of the issues, but it still has the “Blender UX” problem that seems to plague all big FOSS projects…