Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cadthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

>FreeCAD isn't even in the rear view mirror of Solidworks.

I think FreeCAD might be on a distant hilltop in their rearview these days, check it out again.

I tried it for the first time the other day after having heard how much better it's gotten recently, and it made me really wonder how bad was the UX _before_ all these recent improvements. I don't want to bash on it too hard, because it's clear that a ton of hard work has gone into it, but it was really a struggle for me to get some pretty basic things done. The only feedback for a lot of things I tried to do was some not-very helpful error messages in the console, or just the whole program crashing. After trying hard for quite a few hours, reading lots of docs and watching tutorials, I ended up giving up and going back to Fusion 360.

Agreed. I tried it 2 months ago and found the game. Also back to Fusion which is free for hobbyists anyway.

It's an acquired taste. The sketcher is actually pretty good these days and way snappier than Fusion 360 on my machine.

I have been using freecad extensively. Almost daily. It's an absolute utter mess. It barely works. But it's essentially the only open source CAD. So I keep trucking.

The most important improvement is the toponaming heuristic solver spearheaded by Realthunder.

Since that was merged into mainline, it seems that the devs keep breaking the UX and shortcuts without rythme nor reason, while the fundamentals are broken beyond repair.

I would never recommend freecad to anybody, even though this this the only CAD I use, and I actually write python for it for some automation.

I cannot live without freecad. But damn it's a mess.

Another opensource CAD tool to look at is Dune 3D: https://dune3d.org/

which has been discussed here in the past:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958

which if it just had parameters/scripting would have a lot more potential.

I was somewhat excited about it, but one feature I wanted for the thing I was doing at the time was importing an svg, which it didn't support at the time (and from a cursory github search still doesn't support?).

It's a shame, because it looks really nice. Maybe I'll check it out for the next thing I do where that's not a requirement. Might be a shame since I've finally learnt how to (basically) use freecad now!

Importing an SVG will require support for Bézier curves, which is a tough lift mathematically.

looks like they've got some support for bezier's internally (and they allow exporting SVG's) so I assume the building blocks should be there? I definitely have no idea, and haven't looked into it though.

As an opposing viewpoint, I also use FC extensively for designing moderately complex parts (fully parametrically constrained assemblies, dozens of parts per assembly, mechanical components involving motion).

I've also extended the functionality with python, and have heavily customized the theme and shortcuts to fit my personal taste.

I not only tolerate the software, but enjoy using it, and am quite proficient at it.

I would recommend FreeCAD to others, but with some caveats. The most important being that they need to be willing to tolerate a few hours of introductory material, and second that they are serious about using the software long-term.

Otherwise, I'd probably just recommend Onshape. But, for many others, FC is fully viable.

Yeah but objects in mirror are closer than they appear

Reply on news.ycombinator.com