Comment on Is there no good inexpensive CAD software?
fluxx@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve been using freecad with great success for years now and I’d say while I agree freecad is rough in terms of ux, it is highly usable, especially after 1.0 version. I feel like investing time in overcoming its flaws and weaknesses will pay off in the future, as it will enable access to a stable, eternally free and reliable software. Though I also agree it crashes frequently, I set a very frequent auto save and I don’t often get screwed now.
FreeCAD is a spectacular second CAD tool to learn. Once you understand the concepts and workflows for one of the industry standard tools, you will know how to translate that to FreeCAD speak as it were.
As a first CAD tool it is atrocious. It crashes while you are exploring new tools and you just don’t have the vocabulary (or muscle memory) to actually ask questions or search for answers.
That’s my take too. Also, while pre 1.0 development was kind of slow, it looks like it’s picking up speed. I guess releasing 1.0 may have given it much needed visibility, and probably attracted some developers.
dodos@lemmy.world 1 month ago
FreeCad was crashing on average every two minutes when I tried using it last month. I really want to like it but crashes need to be toned down…
lukstru@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve been using it for months now and I had zero crashes. Is this a platform thing or just because I’m mostly only using the parts menu?
dodos@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Possibly, it mainly crashed dealing with sketches.
cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No issues with Freecad here and I am on linux + Nvidia!
Are you sure that your system is up to date? are drivers ok?
fluxx@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Well, it definitely isn’t suppose to be THAT bad. I can get a crash every half an hour or even longer. Usually for no apparent reason - like when I want to sketch on a face and the app switches from PartDesign workbench to sketcher or wise versa. And then after restart that doesn’t happen again. That is annoying, has been happening for ages and would really like it to be fixed. But it’s not every few minutes, more like half an hour to an hour.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I have had FreeCAD crash apparently because of something I did. Like it couldn’t handle some operation and couldn’t fail gracefully.
callcc@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Maybe use a release and not a weekly build?
altphoto@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Install the stable versions not the developer versions. Freecad is seriously good. I’m using both freecad and NX on a project. NX for drawings because freecad still chokes on drawings. But its getting better for drawings. We’ll be fully jumping to freecad soon.