FreeCAD: Your own 3D parametric modeler
www.freecad.org
FreeCAD, the open source 3D parametric modeler
  • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
    0·
    18 days ago

    I tried FreeCAD years ago and it sucked balls. The best FOSS CAD software that I currently know of is SolveSpace.

    However it has been a few years. Maybe they discovered UX… I will give it another try and report back!

    • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
      0·
      17 days ago

      Ok first impressions:

      1. Rotate is Shift-Right-Click?? Very weird default choice. Most programs use middle-click.
      2. I created a simple sketch with a couple of slots. Surprisingly smooth! Vastly improved from when I last tried it. Still not quite as good as SolveSpace for sketch creation, but to be fair SolveSpace was originally created to demo of a state of the art sketch solver… I couldn’t find the Dimension tool, but guessed the shortcut was D, which was correct.
      3. Extrude is misnamed as “Pad”. Why?
      4. Clone icon is a sheep :-D - actually the icons are all pretty great.
      5. Cut is called “Pocket”?? Actually the icon for this is not great. Minor issue though.

      I only made a very simple part, but I am impressed. This is significantly better than when I last tried it, when it basically didn’t work at all. I haven’t tried assemblies or anything complex (e.g. extruding up to a non-flat surface, degenerate geometry etc.), but definitely for simple tasks you could use it.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
        0·
        17 days ago

        It’s night and day, even between the “previous” version and this 1.0 release. You can change the navigation, they have presets that mimic other CAD programs / modelling software, so you can even have Blender style shortcuts if you want to for some reason.