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I’ve been learning CAD for printing. I really want to use FreeCAD, but every time I try to do anything, I sink 2 hours into reading wiki’s and watching videos. When I apply what I’ve learned, I end up with a cube (sometimes a cylinder!) and a wall of errors. Then I hop into tinkerCAD/fusion360 and create what I need in 15 minutes.

I’m looking forward to the day that FreeCAD is intuitive enough for me to hop in and do what I need in 15 mins without feeling like I’m manually programming a lunar landing. It’s not there yet, but I’m happy to see the update.

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prenatal_confusion@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I absolutely get you since that was my experience also.

It’s a concept thing for me. Do everything in sketches and make something with it using the Partdesign workbench. But knowing that you can’t just draw a cube and extend part of one face like you can in fusion helped me to understand the take freecad has in cad.

There are some very basic beginner friendly tutorials out there on YouTube. That’s what did it in the end for me.

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- LycanGalen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Oh, yeah, I understood sketches being the starting point, I just lived on the struggle bus any time I tried to sketch anything. The interface is close enough to vector drawing, that it constantly felt like I knew what I was doing, except everything I did threw an error 😅 or the things that in vector drawing would be a simple ‘click on an anchor and drag’, are multi-step processes involving a spreadsheet here.
  
  I know a lot of it is a matter of practice, and I’m sure there are also growing pains for the software. I’m genuinely excited by the changes they’ve made to modifying sketches, and the little explanations at the bottom of the screen, I hope they are able to keep the momentum going.
  
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  - prenatal_confusion@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The struggle bus… You made me laugh
    
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- Damage@feddit.it ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  you can’t just draw a cube and extend part of one face
  
  I used to work with sketches in SOLIDWORKS and Inventor too, but those were just easier to use.
  
  Still, it keeps improving, so fingers crossed.
  
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Bluewing@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Keep trying and keep practicing. Install FreeCAD and practice with MangoJelly tutorials to learn.

One thing that often makes it hard for people switching to any new CAD is things don’t work the same way. So do your best to forget the way you used to do things. Fusion isn’t FreeCAD and FreeCAD isn’t Fusion. You will need to learn new things. So don’t expect it to work the same way.

The next thing that is very helpful is to find models to practice and gain confidence and skills. MangoJelly tutorials are great to learn from, but you need varied practice to gain skills. Here are 50 models you can practice with to gain confidence and skills using any CAD program. Other practice models can be found if you do some searching.

Good Luck!

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ChilledPeppers@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Checkout Deltahedron freecad tutorials on youtube. As a complete beginner, I got reasonably good at freecad pretty fast with them.

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esc@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
But it’s one of those really complex programs that require some knowledge of the problem field and familiarity with UI how can it be made intuitive? Never used fusion, but tinkercad isn’t intuitive or simple.

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- LycanGalen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  TinkerCAD has a low enough learning curve that it is successfully used to teach elementary school students how to model. I disagree with your “but it’s a complex program, so it can’t be easy to pick up.”
  
  Something being inaccessible to the masses shouldn’t be a badge of pride. Make the basics relatively easy to learn, and design the complex elements in a way that builds on the knowledge used for whatever was needed to get to that point. If we want to increase usership of FOSS products, we need the barrier to entry to be at least on par with the commercial products, if not lower. In fact, dedicating a few dev cycles towards new user onboarding to walk people through sketches, extruding, etc. to make it as accessible as possible would make such a difference.
  
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- KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Fusion is okayish, but definitely not something you can just jump into without going through some explainer tutorials. Especially when it comes to the time line.
  
  I taught myself Autocad and even with that knowledge, fusion was kinda unintuative when starting out. It didn’t take long to get into it though
  
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