> You can probably guess my opinions on it though, the software is very good but the cloud-based vendor lock-in is grating, and the free tier is hobbled beyond the point of usefulness. On the plus side, being browser-based, it works perfectly on Linux.
> The 1.1 release of FreeCAD should be soon. I really want FreeCAD to succeed, but blimey they have a big hill to climb. My fingers are crossed.
Since these parts mostly seem to be laser cut acrylic (so mostly 2D), it seems like solvespace would do a good job at cranking out the designs. I haven't used it for a larger project like this though, maybe it was already considered.
For what it's worth I've been using FreeCad 1.1RC2 lately, and for me it's the first FreeCad version worth bothering with. It's now a tool I actively reach for over OpenSCAD and Blender for various projects. Previously I couldn't make the simplest part with it.
I can't wait for the release proper, but I can heartily recommend everyone try the release candidates as well. I've got a feeling this is the tipping point for FreeCad like 2.5 was for blender.
I mean I'll be honest, it's still a car crash of a program, but at least it's now a usable car crash. I've found the following workflow to be pretty good, using the part design workbench:
- create a part
- create a body
- create a sketch
- pad/pocket/revolve/etc
- repeat with additional sketches to taste
I've also been using the proxy object thing, I forget the name, the button is a green blob, to "import" geometry from a master sketch into more specific sketches.
> I mean I'll be honest, it's still a car crash of a program
I'm glad you said that so I feel a little less mean...
I gave it another try but it still feels pretty dire. FPS is bad on a macbook pro with a 120Hz screen on simple models and sketches. I explicitly selected "touchpad" as the navigation scheme, but I still can't figure out how to rotate, and even figuring out panning took me longer than almost every other 3D program out there (blender, PrusaSlicer, macos quick look STL viewer, solvespace).
It still has a splash screen and takes quite a long time to load, like an application from the 90s.
Buttons and actions that are completely irrelevant to me are shown, but disabled, which gives a really cluttered feel.
There's still "part design" and "part" benches. No idea what distinction is being drawn there.
Obviously part of this is from me being inexperienced with the tool, but as a new user all these issues add up to something that doesn't feel approachable or enjoyable to use.
Solvespace has its own issues, but at least it opens instantly and is generally a joy to use.
I'll watch some others slog through FreeCAD 1.1 though so I don't have to, and maybe I'll learn something.
You definitely need to use a mouse with a middle button/scroll wheel, IME. With this, there are presets which work just like other CAD programs e.g. Solidworks. Without it, it’s very difficult to use, but that’s not unique to FreeCAD.
The base UI is quite bad but there are ways to improve it - either through settings and better organisation [0] or via plugins.
I’d suggest to watch a couple of tutorials specifically on 1.1 ([1] was my entry point) as every CAD program had quirks and frustrations at first. I’d say that for hobby-level creations, 1.1 now has ~80% of the usability of Solidworks, once you figure out how.
I’m not sure what’s going on with the performance on your system; I’ve used various 1.1 versions on a Windows laptop and a MacBook Pro and they’re both sufficiently performant. (I usually use a development or RC build from GitHub [2])
Thanks for the links, especially [0]. That one was the most compelling for showing how an experienced user actually models a part. It's a shame that the UI defaults need to be tweaked so much to make things usable but I know there's no single UI that works for everyone.
> It still has a splash screen and takes quite a long time to load, like an application from the 90s.
The splash screen can be disabled and it takes 3 seconds to start on my mac. Fusion however has two splash screens (first a regular one, then one that covers the whole app window) and it takes 32 seconds to load! (to be fair, once loaded it's much better than FreeCAD).
Oh yeah, you won't find me defending Fusion. I can understand when you're loading a heavy scene or recomputing _everything_ in a complicated model, but I can't understand multi-second loading times and splash screens for loading...the start screen.
> It still has a splash screen and takes quite a long time to load, like an application from the 90s.
Lots of it is single-threaded, which is an endless frustration on a machine with umpteen cores. Especially frustrating given that it means compute happens on the UI thread.
The trouble with Solvespace is that using it quickly turns into randomly nudging points in hope to avoid kernel failures. Lately I have been using Dune 3D which uses much more reliable kernel.
Thanks, I eventually discovered it after a ton of trial and error. It's a shame though because the whole point of a touchpad is multitouch gestures which actually make navigating CAD applications pretty nice. I'll use a touchpad or a combination of touchpad and mouse in other apps like KiCad and it works quite well. Seems to me like all these open source programs should be stealing/sharing the best implementations of some of these basic things like 2D/3D input controls with each other.
For 2D, sometimes I find it nearly easier to write the gcode by hand (or make a python program that writes the gcode for you). It really isn't as complicated as it sounds, especially if you can tolerate doing 3D in openSCAD.
I'm very into code-based CAD, I actually gave a small talk on it a year or two ago. A longer term goal of mine is to make some sort of hybrid CAD modeling tool which is mostly code-based, but has a GUI for certain things like defining sketches/constraints, and selecting particular geometric features that are hard to describe in code.
Here's a link to the talk if anyone can bear to listen to me for an hour:
It is sad that FreeCAD gets all the attention. If Solvespace had some of it, and the development time following from it, it could get improvements and some of the cool stuff in their pipeline. That would IMO make it a much better CAD program than FreeCAD could ever become.
I know, it's just that in this particular blog post, the designs mostly seem to be extruded 2D sketches which solvespace is particularly good at with its sketch interface.
Solvespace can also do a lot of useful 3D stuff, but it's also missing a lot so I can't in good faith recommend it for any arbitrary CAD work.
Some humans produce slop sometimes, but AI produces slop basically always. I don't see that as an argument to just add more into the system because humans do sometimes.
Your application also doesn't "serve human values". It just statistically gives someone content it thinks they'll want to hear/read, and hides content that might make them uncomfortable or question their own views. A self-reinforcing echo chamber, like I said.
I know AI is all the rage and everyone is trying to come up with something actually useful for it, but this isn't it.
I wish KiCad had a constraint solver built-in for defining footprints and placing some key parts of a PCB. A better library management system would also be nice. That aside, I think their interactive router is pretty great, and a huge improvement over older versions. I first tried KiCad in 2016 or 2017 and routing traces was pretty dire, especially if you had to redo them for whatever reason.
> I'd rather just improve my own skills with all that time and energy
That's what I would recommend, it's time better spent. I use AI occasionally to bounce some questions around or have some math jargon explained in simpler terms (all of which I can verify with external sources) using the free version of chatgpt or gemini or whatever I'm feeling that day, without caring about whatever version the model is. I don't need an AI to write code for me because writing the code is not really the hard part of solving a problem, in my opinion.
Same story with hardware and software. Hardware gets more efficient and faster, so software devs shove more CPU intensive stuff into their applications, or just go lazy and write inefficient code.
The software experience is always going to feel about the same speed perceptually, and employers will expect you to work the same amount (or more!)
> The 1.1 release of FreeCAD should be soon. I really want FreeCAD to succeed, but blimey they have a big hill to climb. My fingers are crossed.
Since these parts mostly seem to be laser cut acrylic (so mostly 2D), it seems like solvespace would do a good job at cranking out the designs. I haven't used it for a larger project like this though, maybe it was already considered.
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