Okay, sure it’s getting better. But the reality is - you need to be able to depend on your CAD to work. I’ve used FreeCAD a lot. It simply isn’t dependable and can’t do the same things a different cad package can. It’s parametric only by name.
Comment on FreeCAD, Ondsel and Prusa Save FOSDEM!
wjrii@kbin.social 4 months agoIt's getting better, and it's critical that it do so, if for no other reason than to raise the floor that commercial offerings have to surpass to retain small-to-medium customers. I haven't committed to it, but I'm rooting for it and following it closely.
Maalus@lemmy.world 4 months ago
fluxion@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Some people just need a toilet key now and then
Maalus@lemmy.world 4 months ago
And yet most people using a cad package need to create very complex things instead.
ScottE@lemm.ee 4 months ago
There’s not a single thing you can’t do in FreeCAD that you can do in other CAD programs - but you do have to understand how it works and it’s limitations.
Maalus@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Which you don’t have to do with other programs. There stuff works. In FreeCAD, it doesn’t. And no, it isn’t as simple as “do it like the tutorials do”. Parametrization breaks all the time simply because you want to change a dimension halfway down the stack. It just sucks.
morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
It’s honestly probably in the good enough territory at this point for makers. I think I finally realised how freecad wants me to use it and found it much nicer to work with after that, and I think I found a camera control I can live with coming from primarily solidworks.
Definitely using more and more, for 70 cad/year I’ll keep my solidworks maker sub for anything I find I can’t do in freecad but I’m really going to try committing to using it this year as my primary cad package. There’s still some quirks but I’m also way more willing to live with that with foss
ScottE@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Exactly this - once people invest the time to understand the FreeCAD flow, and get over it, they’ll find it’s an amazing and extremely productive tool.
I tried out SolidWorks and it’s a complete mess. You can’t just download and install it, it runs a bunch of weird background programs on the computer, and interacting with the multiple web sites is a nightmare. I’ve been waiting well over a month for them to refund under the promised 30 day guarantee. I’d never, ever do anything with that awful company again.
I’m really looking forward to see how Ondsel does. I’ve been using it for the last week or two, as it’s integrated 0.22 features, and I think it could be a really good thing for the FreeCAD community.
morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Oh yeah solidworks connected is a right pain, I use it purely because of my experience with solidworks itself, familiarity goes a long way especially when it’s been a while. Ondsel is what I’ve been using, grabbed it on a whim after it was recommended a few weeks ago. The fact it’s done by a bunch of freecad contributors is interesting to me, and not that I need then but the collab tools look interesting.
Wrt to the workflow it’s funny because it’s the way I wanted to use it, it totally behaves like other cad packages. I’m definitely sketch first for everything, I just was using the part workbench instead of the PartDesign workbench. I actually really like how freecad handles variables through the spreadsheet, put together the start of some parametric gears for a project idea I have.
ScottE@lemm.ee 4 months ago
I’ve found the same thing with regard to workflow - I find it really weird when people say it’s nothing like any other CAD programs, because it really is. You start with sketches and build up from there. Yes, the spreadsheet feature is amazing! I couldn’t believe SolidWorks forces you to buy Excel to do the same thing, which is crazy. The spreadsheet integration in FreeCAD is great - with the macro that handles the reference labels.