Exactly this - FreeCAD is great, but you have to learn to do things its way if you want stable designs. While there is a learning curve, it’s really no worse than Fusion360 was in figuring out how to achieve my design goals. There are fantastic YouTube channels out there, like MangoJelly when you do get stuck. I converted all my older designs from Fusion360 to FreeCAD, and everything since is in FreeCAD, and I haven’t looked back. I think many people are just afraid to admit they are daunted by FreeCAD, and rather than work to understand it, they just complain and say it’s bad, without ever actually putting any effort into learning the platform.
Comment on PSA: Try FreeCAD Link Branch (it's a big improvement!)
twack@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’ve been spending this weekend learning FreeCAD as well. Although I have found it frustrating at times, I’ve felt like its mostly just very unforgiving about “bad design”. For example, freeCAD has been working best for me when I actually sketch every single element out. Every face, every cut, every pocket is part of a sketch and then a 1 step operation. If you design like that then FreeCAD is actually quite powerful, and I’m starting to like it.
ScottE@lemm.ee 6 months ago
kizzard@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I agree! It does enforce being clean and thoughtful about your design. But the inability to use a single sketch for more than one operation still bugs me. I loved being able to plan out and see all (or at least multiple) features in a single sketch in Fusion. In FreeCAD I can only figure out how to do this by making a master sketch and then projecting single features out to multiple other sketches, which works, but like everything in FreeCAD, just takes more time…
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The only time I don’t use master sketches are either if there’s “too much” on top of each other or I’m importing a sketch to apply a logo (if I upload an STL or something, I’ll slap on a quick little logo somewhere unobtrusive so I’ll know if somebody runs with it to thingiverse or somewhere else. having that logo premade in a sketch makes it alot easier. just import and call it good.)
Chreutz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I think the seeing in the (‘data’ view of the) sketch is called ‘Make Internals’ or something similar. It creates a surface for every closed area in the sketch, and seperately selectable line geometries for all connected lines.