Improvements to FreeCAD

yy_boi

I was recently catching up to the talk you had with Issac, and wanted to know what features were lacking in either the current Fusion, or FreeCAD that you would like to see. I do SWE as my job, and may have a bit of free time to help with some QOL or feature implementations.

I guess this could be an open ended question for anyone here on the forums.

hoffmantactical

You beat me too it! Was going to ask the same. At this time I don't have a good answer, as I've not used freeCAD in a long time. But it is my intention to install freeCAD on a Linux system and give it a detailed tryout.

After reading through the freeCAD docs I can see that it actually has a lot of modern features and should be quite capable. I suspect the issues will be with the interface and a lack of flexibility with the tools. E.g. the twisting issue when using the Surface Sections tools.

MooringGrey

I have more or less the same things to say as Tim. I don't have enough FreeCAD experience to recall specifics (mainly because FreeCAD has been too frustrating to use consistently), but I do know that it has a big problem with being inflexible. Evidently you have to do things in a particular order or else drawings start to behave in ways you don't expect, even though to me, as long as the constraints are set correctly, there shouldn't be an issue. Been teaching myself Fusion in the meantime.

MooringGrey

I think efforts like this are especially important since we aren't guaranteed that Fusion will stay free for personal use forever, or that Autodesk won't eventually incorporate an AI-powered spying feature that alerts if a certain user is designing firearms. FOSS should always be our go-to, but unfortunately, our best FOSS alternative just sucks right now.

hoffmantactical

MooringGrey Yes. A good open source CAD is greatly needed. I think freeCAD has the backbone (it's based on Open Cascade I believe), it just needs a lot of quality of life improvement. Honestly, a I'd be happy with a closed source option if it came from a company with a model like Black Magic.

AlexTGV

I know when I tried FreeCAD for the first time, I had a hard time finding where the snap options were. I haven't really used it since then. I'm saving figuring that out until I really have some time to.

hoffmantactical

I think part of it is the way they have broken the toolset into "work benches". Solidworks tried to do this with the command manager as well. Fortunately in Solidworks it's optional, not so sure about freeCAD. I use a mix of tools and swapping sets is a real pain.

Yukon

Ondsel is a company I have been following recently. It's a closed source FreeCAD wrapper with more functionality added and a more usable UI. Free for solo users, with affordable prices for cloud options (like Fusion).

I tried it on launch, and it was a big buggy, but it seems like their company is very active with development. It is an interesting concept, and if they can bring in enough developers and resources from private funding to make FreeCAD more usable, I'm all for it.

hoffmantactical

Yukon I've heard good stuff about them. It looks like they will have a free or low cost non-cloud option available for commercial use. The cloud based PDM and other ancillary services are where it looks like they plan on making profit, though I'd rather pay for a perpetual license and run it locally. Saas is mostly an unneeded use of technology.

Yukon

hoffmantactical Agreed, one of the big appeals with FreeCAD is the ability for true full local control. SaaS models are frustrating, I'm willing to pay the same cost of several years' worth of subscription for a perpetual license with updates and support.

hoffmantactical

Yukon Absolutely! And I'm happy to pay for updates when I want them as well. Saas is a business model which does not help the consumer, and it probably the company as well. It's more about control unfortunately.

PlainsPrepper

Not to restart on old thread but the 1.0 Release Candidate for FreeCAD is available.
Downloaded it and made a small part in it.
Unfortunately neither my Fusion 360 or FreeCAD skills are good enough to decide which is better.
I've hit road blocks in both that are probably due more to lack of skill than issues with the software.

Planning to try FreeCAD's CAM functionality soon.
My goal to switch away from Fusion when generating G-Code for my CNC machine.

FreeCAD 1.0.0 Release Candidate 2
https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases/tag/1.0rc2

MooringGrey

PlainsPrepper Oh that's cool. I hope it will actually be intuitive to use now. I will have to give it a try.

hoffmantactical

PlainsPrepper Who's been pushing the dev on this new version? Is this the work done by Ondsel?

Yukon

Sad news, Ondsel is shutting down 🙁