It’s okay to cry, but also keep going until you figure it out, and watch freecad tutorial videos. I think learning how to cad on freecad is a nightmare, but once you know how things are supposed to be built it works well.
FreeCAD has made me wanna cry every time I try to learn it. Next time I’m gonna just try a parametric plugin for blender, my needs are pretty basic
mvirts@lemmy.world 7 months ago
nesc@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
What’s so bad about it? I have a few complaints about it being extremely slow on my hardware and having some weird UI choices sometimes, but in general it’s great.
wfh@piefed.zip 7 months ago
Maybe give OnShape a try. Its interface is really good and will let you learn parametric CAD in one of the best conditions possible.
sepi@piefed.social 7 months ago
Fusion 360 has been great for me. The modeler is very easy and practical for simple folk like me.
I use their free edition. I had the paid subscription for a year but then went down to free, which works just as great.wfh@piefed.zip 7 months ago
Unfortunately Fusion360 has no official Linux support and is not easy to download and install, while Onshape is browser-based so OS-agnostic.
sepi@piefed.social 7 months ago
The paid version does allow for use from a browser, which I used from Ubuntu a lot. That's how I got into Fusion360 after headaches with Onshape, FreeCAD and many others. The Fusion360 modeler is very good, and parametric.
However, I understand this solution might not work for you.
Cris_Color@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Thanks for the suggestion. I’d wanted something FOSS but maybe itd be better to at least learn on something sensible. I really wanted to make freecad work, but man was it a rough way to try and learn parametric cad 😅
wfh@piefed.zip 7 months ago
Yeah FreeCAD has a pretty rough learning curve. Especially since you need to learn parametric and its UI at the same time. I still mostly use OnShape because it's become second nature, but last time I tried FreeCAD it was much easier since I only had to learn the UI.
Honytawk@feddit.nl 7 months ago
Maybe give MatterControl a try.
It is like TinkerCAD in that you drag shapes around, but has way more features and runs locally. And you can easily load in STL files to cut and paste with.