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God, I long for the day we get a decent open source CAD program but we just arent there yet. Script-based cad like OPENSCAD is just awful, especially for anything complex and extra-especially for assemblies, and while freecad has improved massively it’s still a very similar UX to Sketchup circa 2009 :(
CAD/CAM is one of the biggest underrepresented areas for opensource software, unfortunately largely because it’s so damn hard. There’s a reason basically every open-source polymodeling system pulls from Blender, and that’s because it’s the only robust opensource option out there that’s usable (though blender UI/UX is notoriously terrible for good reason, even after 2.8 and 3.2).
And unfortunately blender isn’t CAD software. Fun for noodly 3D printed parts and technically you can design functional components in it… but it’s deeply miserable to do.
Its not only that the ui/ux is bad. It’s that the people working the project seem to constantly rename, or change tool names which effectively eliminated every YouTube tutorial that came before.
I’ve tried several times to get into it, and still recognize how necessary it is that it exists and thrives, so I keep trying. But ffs, be consistent.
and while freecad has improved massively it’s still a very similar UX to Sketchup circa 2009 :(
I started using OpenDark theme, which I found to look more modern. Also, I believe FreeCAD has some very specific UI-work currently funded (details here), so you should definitely keep your eyes open for progress on this front going forward :)
ETA: Oh, and Blender does have some CAD-plugins - I never tried them myself, but they are supposed to make designing functional components less dreadful in Blender
Ha, thank you. The themeing is not at all my complaint with these tools, but I appreciate the tip! I look forward to seeing what freecad produces, it has a lot of potential but alas, not a lot of funding to make sure the devs can afford to eat.
Last I played around with them the blender cad plugins all use poly modeling, which puts them out of the running for anything more complex than FDM parts. Primarily they exist to either support 3D printing or for simulation/animation of simplified parts. They’re… better than nothing, for sure, but unless you need something specifically given by blender you’d be much better served by just using freecad.
Have you used Blender/FreeCAD as extensively as other proprietary paid software? You might just be used to other software being different. I think the Blender UI is pretty good and FreeCAD is just as capable as any other CAD program. I know someone who models the stuff from tootalltoby CAD Tournaments for fun in FreeCAD and he is about half as fast, but I think that’s fine for being an amateur.
Unfortunately, FreeCAD has some serious functional problems in my experience. I use CAD to make models for 3d printing, and with basically any other option I can make parts significantly faster and better. Also, I have never had an issue with another parametric modeler going back to change a dimension somewhere and it breaking the entire rest of the part, but conversely in FreeCAD I have never had that actually work. It is a complete mind fuck to finish printing a part, find out you got a dimension slightly wrong, and then having to basically start the entire fucking design process over because changing that dimension in FreeCAD just throws a bunch of errors and won’t show you a part anymore.
No, I am not a CAD expert, and I get that. But I can functionally use every other CAD software I have had the opportunity to use (I don’t count Blender for this, there are janky addons but that isn’t what Blender is). FreeCAD is near enough unusable. And anytime people bring up its shortcomings anywhere in the FreeCAD community, they get shit on for not doing CAD correctly, told that FreeCAD is exactly how it should be, and actually you are wrong for wanting it to be any different. I’ve spent countless hours trying to learn how FreeCAD wants me to operate, more than I’d ever spent learning Fusion360, and I still can’t get it to do what I would consider to be the bare minimum.
I think I’ve seen somewhere that you should set up reference values or something so that you can change parameters on the fly without breaking anything, which is insane to need to have to do that to avoid running into the ‘topological naming issue’ that magically no other package had a problem with. I’ve basically stopped using filets and chamfers because those will just destroy any chance I can update anything on the model later on.
The community really is brutal too. I remember reading someone getting taken down because they were asking how to extrude instead of pad while they were on the ‘part design’ workbench
Even in the context of having only experienced certain other CAD software a little bit (e.g. SolidEdge for one class in college, SketchUp for making maybe a handful of models, total), FreeCAD really is worse to use. It’s not just the UI, (although it is partly that and it is genuinely worse, not just neutrally different), it’s that stuff just starts breaking whenever you try to do anything even slightly complex (even after the “topological naming fix”), and that the workflow is just annoyingly internally inconsistent.
For example, you can make a sketch and then apply constraints to it and it’s all well and good, but then you extrude it and suddenly you have to declare the height by setting the properties of the extrude instead of using a constraint or dimension. I assume there’s some kind of workaround involving declaring variables in the data table thing I can’t remember the name of or how to access right now, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. You ought to be able to do things like create a cube by declaring an X edge to be the same length as a Y edge to be the same length as a Z edge using the same tool to set both relationships.
And this is coming from somebody who refuses to use proprietary CAD as a matter of principle at this point, and therefore really, really wants to like FreeCAD.
Lol. While I appreciate the insight, “lack of familiarity” is the “skill issue” of open source projects. I’ve got plenty of experience with both, and I’ve regularly used blender for well over a decade now (which is why I dislike it so very much).
Toby models are fun and speed modeling is a useful way to train, but performance in speed modeling does not equate to usefulness as a design tool. We used to do speed modeling challenges in scad, and while a diverting way to build skills, it has absolutely no bearing on that suite’s usefulness when considering things like: complex assemblies, top-down/bottom-up design, rapid iteration, iterative design tools, surface modeling, parametric design… etc.
I know many people who speedmodel in Rhino, and while I respect the hell out of the masochism their skill, it will never be my first choice for designing a functional part when I have other solidbody modeling tools to choose from. Similarly, I’d never use Alibre or Fusion for cosmetics or complex surface modeling of a part. They’re just not the right tool for the job.
God, I long for the day we get a decent open source CAD program but we just arent there yet. Script-based cad like OPENSCAD is just awful, especially for anything complex and extra-especially for assemblies, and while freecad has improved massively it’s still a very similar UX to Sketchup circa 2009 :(
CAD/CAM is one of the biggest underrepresented areas for opensource software, unfortunately largely because it’s so damn hard. There’s a reason basically every open-source polymodeling system pulls from Blender, and that’s because it’s the only robust opensource option out there that’s usable (though blender UI/UX is notoriously terrible for good reason, even after 2.8 and 3.2).
And unfortunately blender isn’t CAD software. Fun for noodly 3D printed parts and technically you can design functional components in it… but it’s deeply miserable to do.
IDK I’m just screaming into the void. grrgh.
Its not only that the ui/ux is bad. It’s that the people working the project seem to constantly rename, or change tool names which effectively eliminated every YouTube tutorial that came before. I’ve tried several times to get into it, and still recognize how necessary it is that it exists and thrives, so I keep trying. But ffs, be consistent.
It might suck, but if you haven’t, maybe give ImplicitCAD a try: https://media.ccc.de/v/bob2020-110_implicitcad_haskell_all_of_the_things
Hey thanks, I’ll check it out!
Agree. Using freecad coming from Pro-E/Creo /Fusion 360/on shape/Solidworks is brutal.
Yeah FreeCAD has brutal usability. I use it on occasion but if it’s anything overly complex I usually switch to Fusion360
Same. I’ve been trying to force myself to use it but it’s a chore. I’ve yet to get anything usable out of it.
I have made some stuff for gridfinity, there’s a FreeCAD plugin, and a few other small things.
I started using OpenDark theme, which I found to look more modern. Also, I believe FreeCAD has some very specific UI-work currently funded (details here), so you should definitely keep your eyes open for progress on this front going forward :)
ETA: Oh, and Blender does have some CAD-plugins - I never tried them myself, but they are supposed to make designing functional components less dreadful in Blender
Ha, thank you. The themeing is not at all my complaint with these tools, but I appreciate the tip! I look forward to seeing what freecad produces, it has a lot of potential but alas, not a lot of funding to make sure the devs can afford to eat.
Last I played around with them the blender cad plugins all use poly modeling, which puts them out of the running for anything more complex than FDM parts. Primarily they exist to either support 3D printing or for simulation/animation of simplified parts. They’re… better than nothing, for sure, but unless you need something specifically given by blender you’d be much better served by just using freecad.
Have you used Blender/FreeCAD as extensively as other proprietary paid software? You might just be used to other software being different. I think the Blender UI is pretty good and FreeCAD is just as capable as any other CAD program. I know someone who models the stuff from tootalltoby CAD Tournaments for fun in FreeCAD and he is about half as fast, but I think that’s fine for being an amateur.
Unfortunately, FreeCAD has some serious functional problems in my experience. I use CAD to make models for 3d printing, and with basically any other option I can make parts significantly faster and better. Also, I have never had an issue with another parametric modeler going back to change a dimension somewhere and it breaking the entire rest of the part, but conversely in FreeCAD I have never had that actually work. It is a complete mind fuck to finish printing a part, find out you got a dimension slightly wrong, and then having to basically start the entire fucking design process over because changing that dimension in FreeCAD just throws a bunch of errors and won’t show you a part anymore.
No, I am not a CAD expert, and I get that. But I can functionally use every other CAD software I have had the opportunity to use (I don’t count Blender for this, there are janky addons but that isn’t what Blender is). FreeCAD is near enough unusable. And anytime people bring up its shortcomings anywhere in the FreeCAD community, they get shit on for not doing CAD correctly, told that FreeCAD is exactly how it should be, and actually you are wrong for wanting it to be any different. I’ve spent countless hours trying to learn how FreeCAD wants me to operate, more than I’d ever spent learning Fusion360, and I still can’t get it to do what I would consider to be the bare minimum.
I think I’ve seen somewhere that you should set up reference values or something so that you can change parameters on the fly without breaking anything, which is insane to need to have to do that to avoid running into the ‘topological naming issue’ that magically no other package had a problem with. I’ve basically stopped using filets and chamfers because those will just destroy any chance I can update anything on the model later on.
The community really is brutal too. I remember reading someone getting taken down because they were asking how to extrude instead of pad while they were on the ‘part design’ workbench
Why are those even two different things at all?!
Even in the context of having only experienced certain other CAD software a little bit (e.g. SolidEdge for one class in college, SketchUp for making maybe a handful of models, total), FreeCAD really is worse to use. It’s not just the UI, (although it is partly that and it is genuinely worse, not just neutrally different), it’s that stuff just starts breaking whenever you try to do anything even slightly complex (even after the “topological naming fix”), and that the workflow is just annoyingly internally inconsistent.
For example, you can make a sketch and then apply constraints to it and it’s all well and good, but then you extrude it and suddenly you have to declare the height by setting the properties of the extrude instead of using a constraint or dimension. I assume there’s some kind of workaround involving declaring variables in the data table thing I can’t remember the name of or how to access right now, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. You ought to be able to do things like create a cube by declaring an X edge to be the same length as a Y edge to be the same length as a Z edge using the same tool to set both relationships.
And this is coming from somebody who refuses to use proprietary CAD as a matter of principle at this point, and therefore really, really wants to like FreeCAD.
Lol. While I appreciate the insight, “lack of familiarity” is the “skill issue” of open source projects. I’ve got plenty of experience with both, and I’ve regularly used blender for well over a decade now (which is why I dislike it so very much).
Toby models are fun and speed modeling is a useful way to train, but performance in speed modeling does not equate to usefulness as a design tool. We used to do speed modeling challenges in scad, and while a diverting way to build skills, it has absolutely no bearing on that suite’s usefulness when considering things like: complex assemblies, top-down/bottom-up design, rapid iteration, iterative design tools, surface modeling, parametric design… etc.
I know many people who speedmodel in Rhino, and while I respect the hell out of
the masochismtheir skill, it will never be my first choice for designing a functional part when I have other solidbody modeling tools to choose from. Similarly, I’d never use Alibre or Fusion for cosmetics or complex surface modeling of a part. They’re just not the right tool for the job.