I’m sorry you’ve had a poor experience with FOSS software, I’m sure the project will give you a full refund if you ask them.
Unethical pro tip: write obviously wrong documentation, post it somewhere, and then wait for people to flame you while explaining the correct methods.
I’m ashamed to admit I’ve done that a couple of times when I was completly ignored for straight up asking how to do something.
This is the fastest and bestest way. And this is the reason Wikipedia works lol
How do we get the makers of FreeCAD to document their fucking software?
It’s FLOSS. You may not like that but it’s up to everyone of us to contribute to make things better. With our time, with our money, or with our expertise. And there is no fucking need to be fucking mad at anyone for not fucking doing it for you.
Or you can spend the money, time and expertise you don’t have for FLOSS on shiny Apple or Microsoft proprietary apps so they can keep on not making good documentation and not giving a fuck about it. It’s fucking up to you.
Pay them?
The good thing about OSS is you don’t have to be a programmer to contribute.
If the documentation is lacking you can write up a one pager and submit it to their wiki for integration.
https://wiki.freecad.org/User_hubHow am I supposed to write the documentation for software that I have no method of learning how to use?
Read the wiki, experiment, and improve it.
But indeed, CAD is a very specific way of thinking, and if you haven’t done any technical drawing course you won’t find it by yourself
You want to play a fun puzzle game? Go figure out how to get basically anything done with the macro/scripting system. The app exposes a Python console to the user and they didn’t bother to publish an API reference so you’re left resorting to the “dangle a cat from a string and hit it with a stick to see what falls out” method of veterinary school. Why is being open source an accepted excuse to force users to attend Pinata University?
This is what I tell my co-workers:
Don’t come to me with a question and ask for the answer. Come to me with the answer that you came up with and ask me why it doesn’t work.
In other words, at least try to be the solution. You’re more likely to get help from those who can help you.
Start writing the documentation. Fill in everything you know. There might be people you help who don’t know as much as you.
Post about it, and give others the opportunity to correct your documentation.
Open the source code and see if you can start to work out the API. It’s all in there. That’s where the people who are writing it are documenting it.
If you put the effort in, then you’ve joined the team, even if no one invited you. Once you’re on the team, the people writing the code will see you as a contributor and they’ll be more willing to put the time in to help you.
By watching YouTube tutorials or turning on the monkey part of our brains and poking around in the software until something happens.
