The sketching speed should speed up a little coming soon. I've seen other YT channels covering the new features in the currently nightly development builds, and one is a setting to turn on that will automatically allow you to type your constraint measurements as you are drawing shapes, like many of the other CAD programs do.
@@pydron The channel @MangoJellySolutions has a couple videos about new features coming in the 0.22 development releases. The first one mentions the new automatic constraints and how to enable/disable/use them. You tube doesn't seem to like links so I'll try to provide a link in a reply to this comment.
Solid on point review. I switched from Fusion (name changed recently) to FreeCAD about a year ago. Like you, it was a bit rough at first. The sketcher really is the worst aspect of it. When a sketch breaks, you don't get a lot of help finding the problem. Your advice to keep sketches simple is spot on! I find that using the Part Workbench is much less prone to breaking your model than PartDesign (with sketcher). Your example model could easily be done in the Part Workbench and would not barf if you added an extra hole. Despite my frustrations with it, I use it for almost all my 3D CAD work now and have donated.
It may take longer (or not) , but trying to sketch on datum planes instead of faces can reduce breakages due the topological naming problem. The devs are close to releasing a version that fixes the TNP
I've found that datum planes are not a silver bullet when it comes to topological naming problem and having your designs not break. Essentially, the opensource devs need to get very serious about the TNP to make this software viable IMHO. Given that there is already a branch of freecad with the TNP fixed, and all they have to do is port the branch to main... and they have not done that for 2 years... I don't hold out much hope for the main branch at the moment.
The developers of FreeCAD are doing exactly what you suggest, implementing the TNP solution of Realthunder into the main FreeCAD. It proves to be a very time consuming task though to ensure it being stable and backwards compatible
@@HeDzsz Having shifted from 3+ yrs in Fusion to FreeCAD in the last few months a fix to the TNP issue will be a game changer. It will shift FreeCAD from being quirky and sometimes awkward to a tool that you can "just use". I know you can do amazing things with it as is. I have purservered to the point I can model and assemble projects (e.g rear bumper in folded sheet metal and bent shcedule 40 pipe for a Toyota Hilux, portable camping fire pit.). But the fights with TNP issues has been monumental and required several stiff G&Ts. 🙂 Kudos to the devs for pushing this forward. I have some appreciation on those types of efforts as a contributing dev to aspects of the Linuxcnc span of projects.
Look at the Wikipedia entry for "Topological Naming Problem" - It is a mathematical problem known to be unsolvable.Fusion360 and other CAD packages have this too, by the way, they just hide it by essentially doing guesswork below the hood. If you understand this problem and what causes it, you can easily break models in *any* CAD program. You can also easily construct models to not break. I am not part of the "datum plane everything" crowd, because there are better ways. The most easy solution is this: Don't reference 3D edges or faces. Instead, reference the line in the sketch from which the edge or face is generated. Also be aware that you can GIVE NAMES to any crucial constraints within a sketch, and then get the value by referencing that name. So if you have a face that's parallel to, say, the XY base plane, generated by a pad that is 20mm, don't simply sketch on the face, but consider creating another sketch on the XY base plane, and give it a Z-offset of "=[name_of_pad].length". You can also use a spreadsheet for all your crucial dimensions, and reference them from there. Or create a master sketch (just google "master sketch workflow"). All of this, btw, is good practice in *any* CAD software and will help you create better, more stable models no matter what software you work with.
I create a primary sketch (or perhaps two, on different axis) and then create subsketches from that. This resolves most of my TNP issues as well as Maxim's desire to extrude subsketches (by making the creation of derived sketches fast and easy). This does become difficult with compound angles but thankfully, my needs are usually pretty simple. I don't use spreadsheets but that might also help link geometry changes across sketches (sometimes I feel like I'm the only FreeCAD user not using spreadsheets?). I've only ever used FreeCAD. I'm very wary of freemium products and having my work be held hostage due to mercurial policies changes.
I can't stand GIMP. Have been using Photopea for the last two years. It's a complete Photoshop clone and has some really nice features like "vectorize" and "magic cut".
@@cwill6491 I use Photopea. Runs in the browser and is basically a Photoshop clone all the way down to the UI and natively opens/edits/saves to PSD. Also has AI features. For quick stuff, I don't even bother to open Photoshop anymore despite paying for it.
Free Cad is powerful, It is free!!!!!! I have a BSME 1973 and a Tool and Die Maker Apprenticeship, own my own machine shop 34 years. I went to community college to learn Solidworks and did beginners, intermediate and advanced Auto cad there. I self taught myself Free Cad. I now have strokes and bad diabetes. So I do Free Cad and Open Scad for fun now. I just bought a 3D printer for fun. Free Cad Is the way to go when you have no money and even if you have money!!!!. Harry Lyga
I had a small Autodesk Inventor course at school. I remember the whole parametric thing blowing my mind. To see it in a FOSS project is amazing. Big kudos to FreeCAD developers.
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge of FreeCAD in this excellent video. I am a Fusion 360 user that has a paid 'legacy' subscription that has a locked-in annual subscription fee of $310/year as long as I continue to renew it, so I will not be leaving Fusion 360 for modeling any time soon. However, the simulation functions of FreeCAD are of great interest to me, since those same functions in Fusion (except for static stress analysis) are behind an extra 'cloud credit' payment wall in Fusion. Also, I believe the fact that sketches need to be kept simple in FreeCAD is a feature, not a bug. I thnk that even though Fusion allows the user to make complex sketches that can sometimes make an entire model, I believe that making complex sketches in Fusion (or any other parametric, history based CAD modeler) is a very bad practice. With complex sketches, constraints can become very hard to keep track of, and the Fusion group in Facebook is littered with posts where a user asks 'why can't I constrain my sketch' while their sketch looks like a complicated AutoCAD drawing. So, I at least think it is good that in FreeCAD, sketches need to be kept simple.
Thankyou for the call to donate to the opensource community. Also thankyou for donating to our beloved FreeCad! I would also like to ask more UA-cam content creators to encourage their viewers to contribute a few dollars to the opensource community.
FreeCAD ist the best example of an open source (and free) project gone wrong. It has the potential of being an exceptional tool BUT in reality its slow, buggy and unstable. I use it frequently and I am still glad it exists.
Amazing and snappy video! As a hobbyist I’ve only ever used FreeCAD and OpenSCAD, and the destructive history changes have made me use the latter more, but perhaps I should try to take some time to contribute to the codebase to give back to the project. It’s amazing how well free open source software can hold it’s ground against industry giants. Blender becoming more industry standard in mesh-based modelling and animation is awesome, and hopefully will push these industries more into supporting open projects.
I moved from Fusion 360 and Onshape (switching from one to the other not to rely on one CAD package in particular) to FreeCAD, and I fully share and endorse your observations. There are a few drawbacks with FreeCAD, but there are so many advantages also... One thing I much prefer in FreeCAD is the TechDraw workbench for 2D drawings that is more versatile. One thing that is overly complex in FreeCAD and that I hope will be streamlined soon with new versions are assemblies of parts, the 3 dedicated workbenches are not frantic at all. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Amazing resume about pros & cons using FreeCAD. I'm a newbie, migrating from AutoCAD (not conect to inventor server since last update, without a valid and very expensive license). God bless open source and Free CAD!
Great overview! I think I'll stick with Fusion for now, but I'm excited for the future of FreeCAD. I hope it will become an industry-standard like Blender, but it's much harder to do that, especially with Fusion integrating literally every part of product design and manufacturing; CAD for parts and PCBs, CAM, Simulation and Rendering.
Yeah ! I did switch from another commercial software at the begining of the year, to be able to share models more easily with the community and I think Freecad is now very usable, I personnaly prefere Realthunder build, that has some improvements with topological naming. But this should be ported to main Freecad soon. Happy to see other people taking the same way. Freecad is and will be a great tool.
Been hearing about this being ported to main FreeCAD for ages now and it still isn't there, even in the latest nightly builds so still at least a year away in an actual release.
Freecad is actually improving a lot on most of the pain points you mentioned: The infamos toponaming issue which breaks the models has been improved on Realthunder's branch of Freecad, and the principle is now being re-implemented on the main branch. Extruding from sub-sketches is also possible on Realthunder's branch, I assume this will also be merged back to main soon. Setting dimensions right when adding a sketch element: This is has recently been added on the main Freecad. I personally use the Realthunder branch which still has some major improvements, but I am looking forward to seeing them on the main Freecad soon! In my opinion, Freecad is one of the most underrated FOSS tools out there! It suffers from a bad image, possibly because it was very much a "diamond in the rough" until a few years ago. But it is being polished now! And already now to me it is very usable.
I run Linux on all my home computers, and this limits my choices for CAD software. After I got into 3D printing, I taught myself how to use FreeCAD since there is a native Linux version. And It does seem to be getting more stable as time goes by. I'm thankful there is a decent FOSS alternative to the big expensive commercial CAD programs.
One big issue (it has workarounds, but painful) is that every job item in the tree is able to remove old edges and re-create new ones and next jobs can be already linked to edges that this job have removed. So, one workaround - plan your atomic jobs like chamfers to the latest steps, try to use general dimensions in sketches (do not rely on/use existing geometry). Second workaround is that you still can link new edges to the edges that next job uses, and that is painful, but still possible. And do "save a copy" regularly, it allows to backup your work without switching from main file. Besides of that, other disadvantages are so small in face of Fusion360's cost! Upd. Forgot one more thing. Fusion360 don't allow to keep more than 10 projects!!! At least, for me. WTF?! I was need to decide what project to delete to have ability to create fresh one! That was the last nail to say RIP to F360. Thanks Gods, we have FreeCAD!
only 10 active projects. you can have more archived in read only mode. it's really not much of a pain for the average joe, even if you do need to micro manage it once in a blue moon. i think the limitation is more there to make using the free version in a commercial environment really bad...
You don't need multiple separate sketches. That's how I used to do it, now I draw a master sketch then use sub shape binder to create "links" to sub parts of the master sketch. The master sketch is then my parametric entry, although I also use the spreadsheet for that too. Finally, regarding history edits messing up the sketch, you can use realthunder's branch which is slowly being merged to generally fix this, although use of a master sketch too really helps this
@@tobbleboii5988 That's how I learned to use SOLIDWORKS. master sketches all the way. i had issues getting used to freecad though, even with or especially with master sketches. mayve i need to try again.
@@MikkoRantalainen there is a video with the title "LinkStage3] FreeCAD shorts. Multiple pads from one master sketch ." On UA-cam which shows this workflow several ways. I cannot link it as UA-cam is removing my comments with links, sorry
@@bansci Thanks for sharing! The title of video was enough so that I found the correct video. Some channels have spam filters that ban all links and in that case, the best you can do it to mention the verbatim title of the video and the channel name.
Totally agree with you, seeing how autodesk changes its mind over time, is just a bad gamble as it might bite you and then you'll have to forcibly learn Freecad anyway. So yeah, let's donate to the project, in the end we all benefit from it
The problem where operations change the edge they apply to is a result of a problem with FreeCAD known as the topological naming problem, and there are efforts underway to fix it. I use RealThunder's branch, and Ondsel is also working on it. It will take some time to integrate them into the main branch, but I've heard work is underway to do so. It is a complex problem that affects core functionality though so it's not a simple patch.
They have supposedly been working on integrating Real Thunder's fixes for years now. Personally I think FreeCAD needs new leadership, they have totally lost focus and are delivering more and more barely working functionality without addressing the mountain of issues they already have.
I recently switched from F360 and mostly due to woodworking workbench. It's really amazing and you can easily integrate it with a cutlist optimizer. FC is a bit more challenging to work with but once learn it, it works well enough. Plus ability to create plugins or even make design using a programming language.
I personally never saw Fusion 360 as an option, started with FreeCAD, decided I didn't want to learn it, moved to OpenScad and later moved to cadquery, and just started to work with Build123d. In general I found that mentally scad just suits me better than a more visual model.
I use FreeCAD, and I like it a lot. My biggest frustration with it is the same as one of yours -- bugs. It is very frustrating when you have a complex part composed of multiple sketches on multiple faces, and then you realize that you need to make a change to one sketch, and that then breaks all of the chamfers, fillets, unions, etc that you defined after that. You can lose a lot of time when you face such bugs. I wish that there were a built-in assembly tool for modeling complex designs. I've used FreeCAD to model simple parts for 3D printing, and I don't need an assembly tool for that. I once tried to use FreeCAD to model parts for a simple robotic arm that I was designing when I volunteered to teach a workshop about 3D modeling and simple microcontrollers to kids at my daughter's school, and I really wish I had an assembly tool when I had to design multiple parts for the robotic arm that had to fit together. I wish everyone working on the 5 different assembly tools for FreeCAD would work together to build a standard assembly tool that would ship with FreeCAD. I don't mind installing plugins, but if you want a future-proof workflow, you want to use tools that will continue to be supported and maintained in future versions. That's why it would be great to have a built-in assembly tool with a commitment to improving and maintaining that tool in future versions.
You can easily build multiple parts in a single model around each other and use reference geometry from other parts by using multiple bodies in PartDesign and Subshape Binders. FreeCAD has an upcoming built-in assembly workbench in the next release which can be tested in the development versions currently.
@@alexandermckenzie5077 As you say, the assembly workbench is not released and judging by the fragile nature of even basic parts modelling moving to unreleased builds is highly risky. The fact that the face naming shambles is still not fixed after years of complaints says it all for me. I now use nothing but the RealThunder fork because that is really the only usable version of FreeCAD.
@@alexandermckenzie5077 Yeah, I recently learned about the new built-in assembly workbench that will ship with the next release after I wrote this comment. That's awesome! I've built complex stuff in the past by using the spreadsheet workbench to define variable dimensions and points referenced by multiple bodies so that the bodies would automatically be repositioned or resized relative to each other if changes are made. I think that works quite well for some designs, but I think the new assembly workbench may be better for other designs. In any case, FreeCAD keeps getting better, and I'm looking forward to the new release!
I'm looking at you drawing the 1st sketch. 1. Don't draw all holes. Use linear pattern or array to make as many holes as you want. 2. If you want to draw all circles in the sketch, don't give each of them diameter. Just give a diameter to one of them, then select all circles and press "=". 3. To set a linear constraint, press L for horizontal and I for vertical. This will speed up your drawings. 🍻
I use a couple of different versions of FC (linkstage and latest not linkstage) and some of them allows to select what part of a sketch you want to use for pad or holes.
Thank you for this. I’m sick of fusion putting the prices up. I was paying for a single licence and the price rose hugely and they kept it not obvious that they put the price up.
I learnt in Solidworks which I think is the best, I have to work since 2022 with Inventor which is often a pain. When I tried fusion 360 it was disgusting painful. Then I tried free cad and I felt I was back in stone age and thought Inventor isn't that terrible in the end 👀
Great video. Totally agree with your assessment. I started my hobby CAD journey with Fusion but was annoyed by the limitations and always somewhat in fear of losing my models one day unless I pay. Spent some time in FreeCAD and now I use it all the time. Yes, it takes some time to get used to it but for the stuff I do, it's way more than enough. For people starting, I think it's a good idea to start with fusion to get the general idea on how to model in parametric CAD programs. Once you know how to approach it, it's way easier to switch to FreeCAD as you have the skills to work around the quirks. One drawback is of course that once you get used to Fusion, you'll miss some of the features in FreeCAD like the mentioned multiple extrusions from a single sketch. However also for me, that's something one can indeed get used to.
To add to your fear of loosing your models: A colleague of mine recently used all his cloud saved models and they were gone. Mostly tutorial models and such. However the cloud save structure is what annoys me about it. I'm currently looking into solid edge community which is very good so far and allows to keep your files offline and is a bit faster on my laptop. However FreeCAD is completely free to use commercially if you are ok with trading some quality of life features.
You can “pad” using pad in part design , any face or click the corner lines say on a hollow pipe and it will pad flat to make a bottom or top for instance
Its nice to see freecad coming along so well. I'm still a bit tied to Fusion due to the fact that I need decent CAM functionality and the fusion 360 cam is actually pretty good imo. Would be good if freecad could do some basic cam.
Thank you FC devs for helping the financialy brused have a nice CAD and feel like a bigshot engineer 👄. It would advance faster if it had more support $.
I have been experimenting with FC and trying FC work flow to duplicate Fusion with some success. Just can't find in the UI what I need yet so run to road blocks. Still experimenting with it. V.22 Sketcher looks like a nice improvement.
I also had to give up on Fusion lately, which was my favorite precision modeling software due to its flexibility. I've since used Blender (polar opposite of Fusion), and Plasticity (one time pay, more flexible version of Fusion). With those two options I have no need to go back to Fusion, not that I don't miss it though. FreeCAD awfully reminds me of Catia V5 in terms of being super strict on iso-constrained sketches, nevertheless I'll definitely give it a go.
Thanks for the video. Coming from the pro audio software world but with a few decades of hobby design and build I’m baffled by how unfriendly and restrictive modeling software still is. Tinkercad being the only exception it seems? Spent hours designing a sim racing steering wheel with all the electronics only to lose it several times due to software bugs in Freecad and fusion. Infuriating. In the end, Did the whole thing in Tinkercad including all the circuit design mostly whilst on the plane or hotel rooms and turned out perfect. More chamfer and beveling options would have been nice but was easy in post production before paint/resin finishing anyway. Printed some parts, cnc cut others and made all the decals too just using that, inkscape and Openbuilds. At least we have lots of choices!
As someone who never plan on using Fusion 360 (their free plan is a joke and the paid license is way too expensive) I appreciate videos such as this that only serve to steel my resolve to use FreeCAD (and learn it). Now, if only there was a good 3d printer for $50...
@alejandroperez5368 yeah, i also want to know what he means by that. There's basically nothing in F360 behind a paywall in the free version unless you need features that only someone using it for commercial purposes would need.
This was a good synopsis. Love/hate FreeCAD, but I’m married to it now for several years. I do use the branch Real Thunder version which helps with some of the issues mentioned. I do believe it is a rather steep and unintuitive learning curve for FreeCAD. Aren’t we still on the beta version after, what, a decade?
Breaking the design by changing something from previous steps is a real problem. I had this already several times. It often means that you have to create everything after the change once more. Another problem is the modification of lengths while constrains are active. Sometimes arcs will flip into the opposite direction and it is almost impossible to flip them back again.
As a fusion/solidworks user I think that freecad seem to be much more on the line of solidwork design planning where design intent it’s more important compared to fusion where you have a much freer environment to work on parts.
I like the idea of FreeCAD, I just find it hard to learn and I have been trying off and on for years. I usually give up when I hit an area that I just can't figure out. I am determined to learn this year. I would like to improve my 3d printed models which I use openscad to create. I just suck when it comes to 3D CAD. I recently found another 3D CAD program called ALibre CAD. It looks interesting though it is not free and the price is a lot cheaper than others, but still a little pricey for me. I still might give it a try. FreeCAD is a bit frustrating at times especially when there are details like holes in different planes. I can't seem to figure out how to attach the planes together properly without errors popping up all the time. Still, FreeCAD is probably my best option right now. I just wish it was more user friendly for beginners to 3D CAD.
I was aware of some of the disadvantages to Fusion 360, but didn't know of how restrictive it was in having it, other than price. My main complaint about FreeCAD, which I use, is that it can destroy your own drawing, and often with fillets and chanfers. It doesn't do it to the extent that I can't recover from it. Often all I have to do is remove something, go back and de what messed it up, and then put the fillets and chanfers back in.
I was fully on board with freecad, however I need CAM and fusion has a post for my machine where freecad does not, and the CAM doesnt work at all on my installs even after following tutorials exactly
Когда-нибудь я научусь рисовать также. А пока очень быстро наловчился рисовать все во FreeCAD через Parts - слиянием и вычитанием и мне для 99,9% задач этого более чем достаточно. Хотя я рисую сложные вещи - с инженерной точки зрения - корпуса для устройств, с кучей выемок, ребрами жесткости, вставками, проходными отверстиями и так далее.
Is Plasticity a viable option for you? It's a relatively young program, but allows for inputting sizes while creating the shapes and extrusions, is super fast, and now has the ability to draw in measurement lines too. I've never done any 3D printing, so I'm not sure if there are export hurdles or anything, but the software is very quick & easy to use, and can do what you showed in this video with ease, and the licenses are very reasonable, at $150 for a single person (as of Feb 2024).
After getting trapped in proprietary software multiple times over the decades I prefer to use open source whenever possible. Plasticity looks interesting though assuming they will honor their perpetual offline license - though it feels like the feature set there is very limited compared to FreeCAD
Freecad is an open source project, so using it and report bugs and suggest improvements and suggestions is also a contribution, and of course if you use it and can donate to the project please do, it helps everyone not just you.
Same here! Iv been using autodesk for a long time as student and in hobby, but to pay the ridiculous amount as a hobbyist ,,,NO there are much better alternative, I won’t go back to autodesk at work either now that I get the hang of free cad ,
Me too thats exactly what happened to me... However Mine was Autocad and Windows back in 2000 ! a small excursion with varicad, but then freecad ! Freecad needs more support as there is only a few people developing if I remember ! but it does what it says on the tin! oh and the community is REALLY helpful !
Did they put the adding a dimension button in a submenu or am I mistaken ? Because that is the pinnacle of terribly thought out UI.. And such mistakes are probably what will keep me from ever using it.
Thats the opposite of a selling point to me. When you need a bunch of addons its high evidence that the base isnt there. Having to rely on little one person projects for your workflow where one person getting busy means your software could break is a bad time.
I've just watched some videos of it but the assembly process seems a bit hampered... In Autodesk Inventor you just click the surfaces, planes or edges of the different parts that you want to align with each other.. instead of having to select some coordinate systems in the parts, from a menu...
Hmm. interesting. I ended up on this video while researching pluses and minuses of dropping FreeCAD and starting to learn Fusion. But it seems it would not be a big win.
@@magnusbeischer1264 thanks. If I modify the sketch, though, the binder may no longer bind what I want. A sketch with multiple "colors" for sub sketches would be great.
@@juanignaciocarrano860the binder will still work (to the "master sketch") but the references you have made in your "new" sketch to the external geometry in the binder will not (when the old references are not there anymore).
I would like you to tell me if you have tried *Solid Edge* which is also for free now and seems to be a lot more powerfull and easy to use than Freecad. Thanks in advance, John.
Judging by their website it's good but since I'm looking to advance and share technology with everyone it's not an option to rely on an expensive closed-source editor. It could be the right choice for an engineering firm but not for me.
No, is it good? Not a fan of subscription model and proprietary formats though :) I'd want to share a model - how would others edit it? What if they take away key free functionality? Burned too many times :)
@@MaximKachurovskiy DesignSpark is just as easy as F360 and works offline. I would be using it now but F360 offers 3Axis CAM which is not available in FreeCAD or DesignSpark. Blender is also popular for creating models for 3D Printing and is becoming much more user friendly. I am probably stuck with F360 because of CAM.
@@JohnHoranzy "You have to let it phone home once a month to check the license" - so all the disadvantages of online/subscriptions, none of the advantages of offline use. The software could be run offline, they just chose not to allow it for more than one month.
Not just future-proof, but 'past-proof'. Having a standalone version of software that isn't subject to periodic relicensing means that you can archive not just your design files but the software tool that created them. If you ever need to go back and modify or recreate a design you can do it. How much can you count on a subscription to open your old 'free version' files in the future? Or that you'll be able to do it for free? Today's design files are potentially tomorrow's hostages if you have to rely on a subscription to maintain them. It's even riskier with web-based apps that could disappear overnight if a company goes under or gets bought out.
@@MaximKachurovskiy I would have liked hear about that, it's actually why I clicked on the video. imo the CAM part of F360 is oustanding, in FreeCAD it's... not bad. These days I use OnShape and export to F360 solely for CAM.
i dare say this "swap over" was FAR EASIER than moving to freecad after having spent 6 years on google sketchup... i really regret that. or despise google/trimble for ruining sketchup... or both, lol.
@@JGnLAU8OAWF6 only if you have them still running on a PC, still have the downloaded .exe, have the appropriate java scripts, dll scripts or whatever they are, and the plugins. last time i tried installing 2016, i gave up after a few days of dicking around and trying to get a PC to deal with it. otherwise its the "cloud" and its crap, and not much use when you have the internet connection i have. then theres the whole workflow of it that really is utterly useless. better to just learn the ins and outs of cad and enjoy being able to change things without having to erase half your work.
So the only advantage of FreeCAD over fusion is that it is open source and offline, all the features are slower or worse. It can only handle simple sketches, you can only use a sketch once, things break when you edit previous steps, etc.
Fusion is a toy compared to FreeCAD. None of what you say is true. Why is your FreeCAD slow? Why do your sketches break? What machine have you got? I am sure you have not much evolved from the "Hello World" in FreeCAD, otherwise you won't make such statements. You can reuse any sketch as often as you want and what do you mean by simple sketches? You can make a sketch as complex as you like, if you use the sketch tool from the BIM workbench and NOT from the Part design workbench. I suggest to try harder and learn FreeCAD properly. I am a former AutoDesk Inventor / Fusion guy and will never go back to proprietary software. FreeCAD does everything I need and that's why I stopped using Fusion all together. Surely, FreeCAD works differently from Fusion. So, learn your new tools and stop spreading misinformation.
Ooof I know people love to give free software passes, but this video alone shows that Freecad will have a lot of massive painpoints and on the gimp vs photoshop to blender vs maya scale this seems more in the middle than in the blender vein of things. I feel like with multiple pieces of free software like this the patch that will supposedly fix all the issues is always around the corner. I did see a fork of freecad that showed potential by caring a lot more about quality of life features that I guess freecad sees as nice to have when nice to have in software saves you hours of work. Just the having to have multiple sketches for each extrude by itself is a deal breaker. I can just imagine how painful that is.
It's not as bad as it looks. When I first tried FreeCAD 5 or so years ago, it was much harder. Now it's very comfortable. Imagine where it'll be in 5 more years. I would suggest trying some simpler projects in FreeCAD every so often and see if you start to get it. Need to come with an open mind though.
@@MaximKachurovskiy I dont think ita about getting it, this isnt a difference in paradigm as much as a worse workflow. I feel like "get it" only really applies when a difference is purposeful rather than an absence or difficiency. One of the reasons I use Fusion is because the idea of wasting my limited time sounds extremely exoensive, currently much more expensive than a Fusion license. I dont even make money on my Fusion use yet, but I know that given my limited time, the longwr something takes, the higher the chance of failiure due to being incomplete, which might be a me thing but I imagine many are like that, so having to get used to a slower system sounds far from ideal.. very far. Funnily enough, I don't recommend Fusion360 electronics for simular reasons, as it has excessive painpoints and there, I think Kicad appears supirior even though Im just starting with both on the electronics side of things.
Also, FreeCAD will keep improving and after few years all the CAD the packages will be, for all practical reasons, more or less the same, as it happened with cellphones. In the other hand, the main CAD companies keep splitting their packages to charge more. Licenses, tokenization, and other marketing BS (including AI) when in reality they are not much better than 10 years ago, just money grabbers.
Lions have used freecad for 6 years, so it must be time to try fusion 360. Being able to use your own revision control instead of autodesk's monetized repository is a win.
@@MaximKachurovskiy Solidworks Maker edition is US$100/year. I get it for half with an EAA membership. There is also Solid Edge Community Edition, but have not tried it yet.
@kellyjordan, I tried the SW maker addition for the CAM. $100 per year was something I could justify. I found the interface to be hot garbage and I donate that money to freecad now. Plus, Dassault is just doing what Autodesk did... Free until they get it debugged and the put everything useful behind a pay wall.
1:17 _"sketching and dimension constraining are 2 diff ops"_ that's going to improve in fc-0.22 - see the video from mongo jellly solutions smth smth on youtube also, why are you _not_ using shortcuts? the open source applications are much much more keyboard friendlier than commercial bloat it was excruciating to watch u doing so much back-&-forth with pointer 1:39 i like that the part to be extruded should be explicit, and construction lines are required. commercial bloats dumb down things way too much. 3:40 _"create a single sketch & extrude [diff parts of it] to different size"_ this technique of using a master sketch was available even in 2022 (v0.19/0.20) - but yeah, you will have to search some tutorial for it. it involves linking sketches or smth like that.
*Imagine how I feel coming from Rhino 3d, where EVERYTHING is easier. And I have 1 of two crap programs to choose from.* NOTHING breaks in Rhino. I can add a hole at the very end of everything, and I have a hole.
per me e meglio Freecad, lo uso per modellare pezzi che stampo in 3d, e piu difficile apprendere l'uso del programma rispetto a a Fusion 360, ma non necesita di connessioni, Freecad non ti perdona un errore grossolano e rischi di andare in crash e perdere il lavoro fatto se non salvato, Fusion lascia un anno di tempo prima di dover acquistare la licenza anche in hobby mode, questo non e imlicito e non é ben spiegato,per quello che devo fare io pagare anche solo 100 $ all anno e troppo, per questo ho imparato ad usare Freecad, ciao ciao Fusion..
FreeCAD is designed around a parametric workflow. And there it is one of the best tools. Trouble arises when you use it for an ahoc workflow and then try to change parameters afterwards.
Lathe CNC controller entirely done in FreeCAD: github.com/kachurovskiy/nanoels/tree/main/h4
The sketching speed should speed up a little coming soon. I've seen other YT channels covering the new features in the currently nightly development builds, and one is a setting to turn on that will automatically allow you to type your constraint measurements as you are drawing shapes, like many of the other CAD programs do.
Do you have any example videos of this? I am very curious.
@@pydron ua-cam.com/video/g-olVnKbdvU/v-deo.htmlsi=WKJ432LvirbWnV7D
@@pydron ua-cam.com/video/g-olVnKbdvU/v-deo.htmlsi=WKJ432LvirbWnV7D. Looks really interesting, although I will wait for the official release.
@@pydron The channel @MangoJellySolutions has a couple videos about new features coming in the 0.22 development releases. The first one mentions the new automatic constraints and how to enable/disable/use them. You tube doesn't seem to like links so I'll try to provide a link in a reply to this comment.
ua-cam.com/video/KMpMNdRu_m0/v-deo.htmlsi=ari_1Ia5ifi83Lha
Solid on point review. I switched from Fusion (name changed recently) to FreeCAD about a year ago. Like you, it was a bit rough at first. The sketcher really is the worst aspect of it. When a sketch breaks, you don't get a lot of help finding the problem. Your advice to keep sketches simple is spot on! I find that using the Part Workbench is much less prone to breaking your model than PartDesign (with sketcher). Your example model could easily be done in the Part Workbench and would not barf if you added an extra hole. Despite my frustrations with it, I use it for almost all my 3D CAD work now and have donated.
Good to know the part workbench may be more capable. I haven't tried it yet.
It may take longer (or not) , but trying to sketch on datum planes instead of faces can reduce breakages due the topological naming problem.
The devs are close to releasing a version that fixes the TNP
I've found that datum planes are not a silver bullet when it comes to topological naming problem and having your designs not break. Essentially, the opensource devs need to get very serious about the TNP to make this software viable IMHO. Given that there is already a branch of freecad with the TNP fixed, and all they have to do is port the branch to main... and they have not done that for 2 years... I don't hold out much hope for the main branch at the moment.
The developers of FreeCAD are doing exactly what you suggest, implementing the TNP solution of Realthunder into the main FreeCAD. It proves to be a very time consuming task though to ensure it being stable and backwards compatible
@@HeDzsz Having shifted from 3+ yrs in Fusion to FreeCAD in the last few months a fix to the TNP issue will be a game changer. It will shift FreeCAD from being quirky and sometimes awkward to a tool that you can "just use". I know you can do amazing things with it as is. I have purservered to the point I can model and assemble projects (e.g rear bumper in folded sheet metal and bent shcedule 40 pipe for a Toyota Hilux, portable camping fire pit.). But the fights with TNP issues has been monumental and required several stiff G&Ts. 🙂 Kudos to the devs for pushing this forward. I have some appreciation on those types of efforts as a contributing dev to aspects of the Linuxcnc span of projects.
Look at the Wikipedia entry for "Topological Naming Problem" - It is a mathematical problem known to be unsolvable.Fusion360 and other CAD packages have this too, by the way, they just hide it by essentially doing guesswork below the hood. If you understand this problem and what causes it, you can easily break models in *any* CAD program.
You can also easily construct models to not break. I am not part of the "datum plane everything" crowd, because there are better ways. The most easy solution is this: Don't reference 3D edges or faces. Instead, reference the line in the sketch from which the edge or face is generated. Also be aware that you can GIVE NAMES to any crucial constraints within a sketch, and then get the value by referencing that name. So if you have a face that's parallel to, say, the XY base plane, generated by a pad that is 20mm, don't simply sketch on the face, but consider creating another sketch on the XY base plane, and give it a Z-offset of "=[name_of_pad].length".
You can also use a spreadsheet for all your crucial dimensions, and reference them from there. Or create a master sketch (just google "master sketch workflow").
All of this, btw, is good practice in *any* CAD software and will help you create better, more stable models no matter what software you work with.
I create a primary sketch (or perhaps two, on different axis) and then create subsketches from that. This resolves most of my TNP issues as well as Maxim's desire to extrude subsketches (by making the creation of derived sketches fast and easy). This does become difficult with compound angles but thankfully, my needs are usually pretty simple. I don't use spreadsheets but that might also help link geometry changes across sketches (sometimes I feel like I'm the only FreeCAD user not using spreadsheets?).
I've only ever used FreeCAD. I'm very wary of freemium products and having my work be held hostage due to mercurial policies changes.
Autodesk tried to charge me over 5g for a 3yr license😂😂. Freecad, Blender, Gimp and Inkscape etc!
Gimp admittedly needs to work on non destructive editing
@@cwill6491what do you mean by non destructive editing?
I can't stand GIMP. Have been using Photopea for the last two years. It's a complete Photoshop clone and has some really nice features like "vectorize" and "magic cut".
Try DesignSpark Mechanical. I use it alot and i didn't go bankrupt Exoprt as STL an into my SnapMaker software and the 3D printer i working.
@@cwill6491 I use Photopea. Runs in the browser and is basically a Photoshop clone all the way down to the UI and natively opens/edits/saves to PSD. Also has AI features. For quick stuff, I don't even bother to open Photoshop anymore despite paying for it.
Free Cad is powerful, It is free!!!!!! I have a BSME 1973 and a Tool and Die Maker Apprenticeship, own my own machine shop 34 years. I went to community college to learn Solidworks and did beginners, intermediate and advanced Auto cad there. I self taught myself Free Cad. I now have strokes and bad diabetes. So I do Free Cad and Open Scad for fun now. I just bought a 3D printer for fun. Free Cad Is the way to go when you have no money and even if you have money!!!!. Harry Lyga
I had a small Autodesk Inventor course at school. I remember the whole parametric thing blowing my mind.
To see it in a FOSS project is amazing. Big kudos to FreeCAD developers.
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge of FreeCAD in this excellent video. I am a Fusion 360 user that has a paid 'legacy' subscription that has a locked-in annual subscription fee of $310/year as long as I continue to renew it, so I will not be leaving Fusion 360 for modeling any time soon. However, the simulation functions of FreeCAD are of great interest to me, since those same functions in Fusion (except for static stress analysis) are behind an extra 'cloud credit' payment wall in Fusion. Also, I believe the fact that sketches need to be kept simple in FreeCAD is a feature, not a bug. I thnk that even though Fusion allows the user to make complex sketches that can sometimes make an entire model, I believe that making complex sketches in Fusion (or any other parametric, history based CAD modeler) is a very bad practice. With complex sketches, constraints can become very hard to keep track of, and the Fusion group in Facebook is littered with posts where a user asks 'why can't I constrain my sketch' while their sketch looks like a complicated AutoCAD drawing. So, I at least think it is good that in FreeCAD, sketches need to be kept simple.
Thankyou for the call to donate to the opensource community.
Also thankyou for donating to our beloved FreeCad!
I would also like to ask more UA-cam content creators to encourage their viewers to contribute a few dollars to the opensource community.
FreeCAD ist the best example of an open source (and free) project gone wrong. It has the potential of being an exceptional tool BUT in reality its slow, buggy and unstable. I use it frequently and I am still glad it exists.
Amazing and snappy video! As a hobbyist I’ve only ever used FreeCAD and OpenSCAD, and the destructive history changes have made me use the latter more, but perhaps I should try to take some time to contribute to the codebase to give back to the project.
It’s amazing how well free open source software can hold it’s ground against industry giants. Blender becoming more industry standard in mesh-based modelling and animation is awesome, and hopefully will push these industries more into supporting open projects.
I moved from Fusion 360 and Onshape (switching from one to the other not to rely on one CAD package in particular) to FreeCAD, and I fully share and endorse your observations. There are a few drawbacks with FreeCAD, but there are so many advantages also... One thing I much prefer in FreeCAD is the TechDraw workbench for 2D drawings that is more versatile. One thing that is overly complex in FreeCAD and that I hope will be streamlined soon with new versions are assemblies of parts, the 3 dedicated workbenches are not frantic at all. Thanks for sharing your experience.
A2 Plus workbench is very user friendly
@@LFANS2001 A2 Plus for the win! I learned it a little over a week ago as a new user of FreeCAD.
Amazing resume about pros & cons using FreeCAD. I'm a newbie, migrating from AutoCAD (not conect to inventor server since last update, without a valid and very expensive license). God bless open source and Free CAD!
Great overview! I think I'll stick with Fusion for now, but I'm excited for the future of FreeCAD. I hope it will become an industry-standard like Blender, but it's much harder to do that, especially with Fusion integrating literally every part of product design and manufacturing; CAD for parts and PCBs, CAM, Simulation and Rendering.
Yeah ! I did switch from another commercial software at the begining of the year, to be able to share models more easily with the community and I think Freecad is now very usable, I personnaly prefere Realthunder build, that has some improvements with topological naming. But this should be ported to main Freecad soon. Happy to see other people taking the same way. Freecad is and will be a great tool.
"But this should be ported to main Freecad soon"
I keep hearing this for the last at least 2 years :/
The fact that everyone uses the RealThunder build shows that clearly FreeCAD needs new leadership.
Been hearing about this being ported to main FreeCAD for ages now and it still isn't there, even in the latest nightly builds so still at least a year away in an actual release.
they're porting everything to freecad for the past few years and nothing has changed.
Freecad is actually improving a lot on most of the pain points you mentioned: The infamos toponaming issue which breaks the models has been improved on Realthunder's branch of Freecad, and the principle is now being re-implemented on the main branch. Extruding from sub-sketches is also possible on Realthunder's branch, I assume this will also be merged back to main soon. Setting dimensions right when adding a sketch element: This is has recently been added on the main Freecad.
I personally use the Realthunder branch which still has some major improvements, but I am looking forward to seeing them on the main Freecad soon!
In my opinion, Freecad is one of the most underrated FOSS tools out there! It suffers from a bad image, possibly because it was very much a "diamond in the rough" until a few years ago. But it is being polished now! And already now to me it is very usable.
I run Linux on all my home computers, and this limits my choices for CAD software. After I got into 3D printing, I taught myself how to use FreeCAD since there is a native Linux version. And It does seem to be getting more stable as time goes by. I'm thankful there is a decent FOSS alternative to the big expensive commercial CAD programs.
One big issue (it has workarounds, but painful) is that every job item in the tree is able to remove old edges and re-create new ones and next jobs can be already linked to edges that this job have removed. So, one workaround - plan your atomic jobs like chamfers to the latest steps, try to use general dimensions in sketches (do not rely on/use existing geometry). Second workaround is that you still can link new edges to the edges that next job uses, and that is painful, but still possible. And do "save a copy" regularly, it allows to backup your work without switching from main file.
Besides of that, other disadvantages are so small in face of Fusion360's cost!
Upd. Forgot one more thing. Fusion360 don't allow to keep more than 10 projects!!! At least, for me. WTF?! I was need to decide what project to delete to have ability to create fresh one! That was the last nail to say RIP to F360. Thanks Gods, we have FreeCAD!
only 10 active projects. you can have more archived in read only mode. it's really not much of a pain for the average joe, even if you do need to micro manage it once in a blue moon. i think the limitation is more there to make using the free version in a commercial environment really bad...
You don't need multiple separate sketches. That's how I used to do it, now I draw a master sketch then use sub shape binder to create "links" to sub parts of the master sketch.
The master sketch is then my parametric entry, although I also use the spreadsheet for that too.
Finally, regarding history edits messing up the sketch, you can use realthunder's branch which is slowly being merged to generally fix this, although use of a master sketch too really helps this
oh that's really interesting! never heard that before :0
@@tobbleboii5988 That's how I learned to use SOLIDWORKS. master sketches all the way. i had issues getting used to freecad though, even with or especially with master sketches. mayve i need to try again.
This sounds interesting. Do you know a tutorial or demonstration video for this workflow?
@@MikkoRantalainen there is a video with the title "LinkStage3] FreeCAD shorts. Multiple pads from one master sketch ." On UA-cam which shows this workflow several ways. I cannot link it as UA-cam is removing my comments with links, sorry
@@bansci Thanks for sharing! The title of video was enough so that I found the correct video. Some channels have spam filters that ban all links and in that case, the best you can do it to mention the verbatim title of the video and the channel name.
Totally agree with you, seeing how autodesk changes its mind over time, is just a bad gamble as it might bite you and then you'll have to forcibly learn Freecad anyway.
So yeah, let's donate to the project, in the end we all benefit from it
The problem where operations change the edge they apply to is a result of a problem with FreeCAD known as the topological naming problem, and there are efforts underway to fix it. I use RealThunder's branch, and Ondsel is also working on it. It will take some time to integrate them into the main branch, but I've heard work is underway to do so. It is a complex problem that affects core functionality though so it's not a simple patch.
They have supposedly been working on integrating Real Thunder's fixes for years now. Personally I think FreeCAD needs new leadership, they have totally lost focus and are delivering more and more barely working functionality without addressing the mountain of issues they already have.
I recently switched from F360 and mostly due to woodworking workbench. It's really amazing and you can easily integrate it with a cutlist optimizer. FC is a bit more challenging to work with but once learn it, it works well enough. Plus ability to create plugins or even make design using a programming language.
I personally never saw Fusion 360 as an option, started with FreeCAD, decided I didn't want to learn it, moved to OpenScad and later moved to cadquery, and just started to work with Build123d.
In general I found that mentally scad just suits me better than a more visual model.
I use FreeCAD, and I like it a lot. My biggest frustration with it is the same as one of yours -- bugs. It is very frustrating when you have a complex part composed of multiple sketches on multiple faces, and then you realize that you need to make a change to one sketch, and that then breaks all of the chamfers, fillets, unions, etc that you defined after that. You can lose a lot of time when you face such bugs.
I wish that there were a built-in assembly tool for modeling complex designs. I've used FreeCAD to model simple parts for 3D printing, and I don't need an assembly tool for that. I once tried to use FreeCAD to model parts for a simple robotic arm that I was designing when I volunteered to teach a workshop about 3D modeling and simple microcontrollers to kids at my daughter's school, and I really wish I had an assembly tool when I had to design multiple parts for the robotic arm that had to fit together. I wish everyone working on the 5 different assembly tools for FreeCAD would work together to build a standard assembly tool that would ship with FreeCAD. I don't mind installing plugins, but if you want a future-proof workflow, you want to use tools that will continue to be supported and maintained in future versions. That's why it would be great to have a built-in assembly tool with a commitment to improving and maintaining that tool in future versions.
Switch to the RealThunder fork it is way ahead with many serious issues like the one you describe resolved or at least vastly better.
You can easily build multiple parts in a single model around each other and use reference geometry from other parts by using multiple bodies in PartDesign and Subshape Binders. FreeCAD has an upcoming built-in assembly workbench in the next release which can be tested in the development versions currently.
@@alexandermckenzie5077 As you say, the assembly workbench is not released and judging by the fragile nature of even basic parts modelling moving to unreleased builds is highly risky. The fact that the face naming shambles is still not fixed after years of complaints says it all for me. I now use nothing but the RealThunder fork because that is really the only usable version of FreeCAD.
@@alexandermckenzie5077 Yeah, I recently learned about the new built-in assembly workbench that will ship with the next release after I wrote this comment.
That's awesome!
I've built complex stuff in the past by using the spreadsheet workbench to define variable dimensions and points referenced by multiple bodies so that the bodies would automatically be repositioned or resized relative to each other if changes are made. I think that works quite well for some designs, but I think the new assembly workbench may be better for other designs.
In any case, FreeCAD keeps getting better, and I'm looking forward to the new release!
I'm looking at you drawing the 1st sketch.
1. Don't draw all holes. Use linear pattern or array to make as many holes as you want.
2. If you want to draw all circles in the sketch, don't give each of them diameter. Just give a diameter to one of them, then select all circles and press "=".
3. To set a linear constraint, press L for horizontal and I for vertical.
This will speed up your drawings. 🍻
Nice work here
I use a couple of different versions of FC (linkstage and latest not linkstage) and some of them allows to select what part of a sketch you want to use for pad or holes.
Thank you for this. I’m sick of fusion putting the prices up. I was paying for a single licence and the price rose hugely and they kept it not obvious that they put the price up.
I learnt in Solidworks which I think is the best, I have to work since 2022 with Inventor which is often a pain. When I tried fusion 360 it was disgusting painful. Then I tried free cad and I felt I was back in stone age and thought Inventor isn't that terrible in the end 👀
Great video. Totally agree with your assessment. I started my hobby CAD journey with Fusion but was annoyed by the limitations and always somewhat in fear of losing my models one day unless I pay. Spent some time in FreeCAD and now I use it all the time. Yes, it takes some time to get used to it but for the stuff I do, it's way more than enough.
For people starting, I think it's a good idea to start with fusion to get the general idea on how to model in parametric CAD programs. Once you know how to approach it, it's way easier to switch to FreeCAD as you have the skills to work around the quirks. One drawback is of course that once you get used to Fusion, you'll miss some of the features in FreeCAD like the mentioned multiple extrusions from a single sketch. However also for me, that's something one can indeed get used to.
To add to your fear of loosing your models: A colleague of mine recently used all his cloud saved models and they were gone. Mostly tutorial models and such. However the cloud save structure is what annoys me about it.
I'm currently looking into solid edge community which is very good so far and allows to keep your files offline and is a bit faster on my laptop. However FreeCAD is completely free to use commercially if you are ok with trading some quality of life features.
... that's why i am using FreeCAD now since years. Great and really free CAD tool. :-)
You can “pad” using pad in part design , any face or click the corner lines say on a hollow pipe and it will pad flat to make a bottom or top for instance
I tried freecad and couldn’t figure out the constraints, but will try again with this video. Thanks!
FreeCAD is awesome!
Very useful review.
Its nice to see freecad coming along so well. I'm still a bit tied to Fusion due to the fact that I need decent CAM functionality and the fusion 360 cam is actually pretty good imo. Would be good if freecad could do some basic cam.
I use FreeCAD for CAM and it was easier to get a hang of than Fusion but there's still quite a learning curve.
Thank you FC devs for helping the financialy brused have a nice CAD and feel like a bigshot engineer 👄. It would advance faster if it had more support $.
I have been experimenting with FC and trying FC work flow to duplicate Fusion with some success. Just can't find in the UI what I need yet so run to road blocks. Still experimenting with it. V.22 Sketcher looks like a nice improvement.
thank you
I wish there was a pdm (plm/dms) add on as storing files, assigning part numbers and ensuring revision control is really critical for me.
Looks good, do you know how it compare to Alibre?
I also had to give up on Fusion lately, which was my favorite precision modeling software due to its flexibility.
I've since used Blender (polar opposite of Fusion), and Plasticity (one time pay, more flexible version of Fusion).
With those two options I have no need to go back to Fusion, not that I don't miss it though.
FreeCAD awfully reminds me of Catia V5 in terms of being super strict on iso-constrained sketches, nevertheless I'll definitely give it a go.
Thanks for the video. Coming from the pro audio software world but with a few decades of hobby design and build I’m baffled by how unfriendly and restrictive modeling software still is. Tinkercad being the only exception it seems? Spent hours designing a sim racing steering wheel with all the electronics only to lose it several times due to software bugs in Freecad and fusion. Infuriating. In the end, Did the whole thing in Tinkercad including all the circuit design mostly whilst on the plane or hotel rooms and turned out perfect. More chamfer and beveling options would have been nice but was easy in post production before paint/resin finishing anyway. Printed some parts, cnc cut others and made all the decals too just using that, inkscape and Openbuilds. At least we have lots of choices!
Valid and good points! Thank you! + 1 sub
Ty Sir
As someone who never plan on using Fusion 360 (their free plan is a joke and the paid license is way too expensive) I appreciate videos such as this that only serve to steel my resolve to use FreeCAD (and learn it).
Now, if only there was a good 3d printer for $50...
What do you mean their free plan is a joke? What limitations are a problem for you?
@@alejandroperez5368 The fact that there ARE limitations beyond "you can't use it for commercial purposes".
$50 is low, but if you want to spend some effort, a (used) bedslinger with Klipper added can be a fine printer,
@alejandroperez5368 yeah, i also want to know what he means by that. There's basically nothing in F360 behind a paywall in the free version unless you need features that only someone using it for commercial purposes would need.
This was a good synopsis. Love/hate FreeCAD, but I’m married to it now for several years. I do use the branch Real Thunder version which helps with some of the issues mentioned. I do believe it is a rather steep and unintuitive learning curve for FreeCAD. Aren’t we still on the beta version after, what, a decade?
> Aren’t we still on the beta version after, what, a decade?
good thing there's a full money back guarantee with all free open source projects.
Breaking the design by changing something from previous steps is a real problem. I had this already several times. It often means that you have to create everything after the change once more. Another problem is the modification of lengths while constrains are active. Sometimes arcs will flip into the opposite direction and it is almost impossible to flip them back again.
What are your thoughts about using Blender for cad? I heard it can be done.
As a fusion/solidworks user I think that freecad seem to be much more on the line of solidwork design planning where design intent it’s more important compared to fusion where you have a much freer environment to work on parts.
I like the idea of FreeCAD, I just find it hard to learn and I have been trying off and on for years. I usually give up when I hit an area that I just can't figure out. I am determined to learn this year. I would like to improve my 3d printed models which I use openscad to create. I just suck when it comes to 3D CAD. I recently found another 3D CAD program called ALibre CAD. It looks interesting though it is not free and the price is a lot cheaper than others, but still a little pricey for me. I still might give it a try. FreeCAD is a bit frustrating at times especially when there are details like holes in different planes. I can't seem to figure out how to attach the planes together properly without errors popping up all the time. Still, FreeCAD is probably my best option right now. I just wish it was more user friendly for beginners to 3D CAD.
What I think? 100% agree with you. That's what I think.
I was aware of some of the disadvantages to Fusion 360, but didn't know of how restrictive it was in having it, other than price. My main complaint about FreeCAD, which I use, is that it can destroy your own drawing, and often with fillets and chanfers. It doesn't do it to the extent that I can't recover from it. Often all I have to do is remove something, go back and de what messed it up, and then put the fillets and chanfers back in.
Do you see Ondsel, a FreeCAD fork with a lot of improvements and reworked features?
looks interesting - like the updates to the UI/UX. Gonna give it a try.
I was fully on board with freecad, however I need CAM and fusion has a post for my machine where freecad does not, and the CAM doesnt work at all on my installs even after following tutorials exactly
Когда-нибудь я научусь рисовать также. А пока очень быстро наловчился рисовать все во FreeCAD через Parts - слиянием и вычитанием и мне для 99,9% задач этого более чем достаточно. Хотя я рисую сложные вещи - с инженерной точки зрения - корпуса для устройств, с кучей выемок, ребрами жесткости, вставками, проходными отверстиями и так далее.
I'm tankfull for Fusion 360 because it got more people in to FreeCAD. =P
Is Plasticity a viable option for you? It's a relatively young program, but allows for inputting sizes while creating the shapes and extrusions, is super fast, and now has the ability to draw in measurement lines too. I've never done any 3D printing, so I'm not sure if there are export hurdles or anything, but the software is very quick & easy to use, and can do what you showed in this video with ease, and the licenses are very reasonable, at $150 for a single person (as of Feb 2024).
After getting trapped in proprietary software multiple times over the decades I prefer to use open source whenever possible. Plasticity looks interesting though assuming they will honor their perpetual offline license - though it feels like the feature set there is very limited compared to FreeCAD
Did you try cadsketcher (addon for blender) for parametric modeling??
No, but I've watched some reviews. FreeCAD is much more than sketching though.
Thanks, loads of these will be addressed in 0.22
Hmm it seems like the whole point of a parametric modeler is that you can go back and make changes without breaking subsequent operations.
Freecad is an open source project, so using it and report bugs and suggest improvements and suggestions is also a contribution, and of course if you use it and can donate to the project please do, it helps everyone not just you.
Does FreeCad have integrated CAM now? For Gcode and cutting preview?
Yes
Same here! Iv been using autodesk for a long time as student and in hobby, but to pay the ridiculous amount as a hobbyist ,,,NO there are much better alternative, I won’t go back to autodesk at work either now that I get the hang of free cad ,
Me too thats exactly what happened to me... However Mine was Autocad and Windows back in 2000 ! a small excursion with varicad, but then freecad ! Freecad needs more support as there is only a few people developing if I remember ! but it does what it says on the tin! oh and the community is REALLY helpful !
Ok - Not to use freeCad. And what to do? What is can work ofline, and freware? I`m try to use freecad, but it is reely hard to use
Did they put the adding a dimension button in a submenu or am I mistaken ? Because that is the pinnacle of terribly thought out UI.. And such mistakes are probably what will keep me from ever using it.
I had to lower the resolution for screen recording, there's no practical problem with sketching or dimensioning
FreeCAD’s big “selling” point to me is the community and ease of adding add-on workbenches that can VASTLY expand the functionality of the program.
Thats the opposite of a selling point to me. When you need a bunch of addons its high evidence that the base isnt there.
Having to rely on little one person projects for your workflow where one person getting busy means your software could break is a bad time.
and the more people that use FreeCAD, the harder the commercial software makers will have to work
Editing previous operations can break following operations: when you have one job.
Have you tried Blender with CAD Sketcher addon?
According to the reviews I've seen some time ago it wasn't ready for mass adoption yet but maybe things have improved
I've just watched some videos of it but the assembly process seems a bit hampered... In Autodesk Inventor you just click the surfaces, planes or edges of the different parts that you want to align with each other.. instead of having to select some coordinate systems in the parts, from a menu...
Hmm. interesting. I ended up on this video while researching pluses and minuses of dropping FreeCAD and starting to learn Fusion. But it seems it would not be a big win.
I also wish it was possible to use sub sketches for operations.
You can use the subshape binder from a "master sketch" to do that.
@@magnusbeischer1264 thanks. If I modify the sketch, though, the binder may no longer bind what I want. A sketch with multiple "colors" for sub sketches would be great.
@@juanignaciocarrano860the binder will still work (to the "master sketch") but the references you have made in your "new" sketch to the external geometry in the binder will not (when the old references are not there anymore).
I would highly recommend using keyboard shortcuts, not clicking on things, much much faster probably also holds true in Fusion 360
Sure. I'm clicking on icons for operations to be clearly visible on the video.
I would like you to tell me if you have tried *Solid Edge* which is also for free now and seems to be a lot more powerfull and easy to use than Freecad. Thanks in advance, John.
Judging by their website it's good but since I'm looking to advance and share technology with everyone it's not an option to rely on an expensive closed-source editor. It could be the right choice for an engineering firm but not for me.
It's the "free for now" part that I'm concerned about.
did you try DesignSpark Mechanical
No, is it good? Not a fan of subscription model and proprietary formats though :) I'd want to share a model - how would others edit it? What if they take away key free functionality? Burned too many times :)
@@MaximKachurovskiy DesignSpark is just as easy as F360 and works offline. I would be using it now but F360 offers 3Axis CAM which is not available in FreeCAD or DesignSpark.
Blender is also popular for creating models for 3D Printing and is becoming much more user friendly.
I am probably stuck with F360 because of CAM.
@@JohnHoranzyhow does it work offline when you have to pay a monthly subscription?
@@FreezeSYou have to let it phone home once a month to check the license. But check the current terms.
@@JohnHoranzy "You have to let it phone home once a month to check the license" - so all the disadvantages of online/subscriptions, none of the advantages of offline use. The software could be run offline, they just chose not to allow it for more than one month.
I switched to blender.
It just goes faster on my laptop, so i can tinker on the go.
the best thing for freeCAD is if Fusion is getting more expensive or gets more limitations..lol I´m about to start with freeCAD probably.
Not just future-proof, but 'past-proof'. Having a standalone version of software that isn't subject to periodic relicensing means that you can archive not just your design files but the software tool that created them. If you ever need to go back and modify or recreate a design you can do it. How much can you count on a subscription to open your old 'free version' files in the future? Or that you'll be able to do it for free? Today's design files are potentially tomorrow's hostages if you have to rely on a subscription to maintain them. It's even riskier with web-based apps that could disappear overnight if a company goes under or gets bought out.
The only alternative for me would be Alibre Design.
But I need the CAM of fusion for my CNC projects.
FreeCAD has CAM too, I use it
@@MaximKachurovskiy I would have liked hear about that, it's actually why I clicked on the video. imo the CAM part of F360 is oustanding, in FreeCAD it's... not bad. These days I use OnShape and export to F360 solely for CAM.
Can it generate gcode for CNC machines?
Yes, it can
i dare say this "swap over" was FAR EASIER than moving to freecad after having spent 6 years on google sketchup... i really regret that. or despise google/trimble for ruining sketchup... or both, lol.
You can still use older versions of SketchUp
@@JGnLAU8OAWF6 only if you have them still running on a PC, still have the downloaded .exe, have the appropriate java scripts, dll scripts or whatever they are, and the plugins. last time i tried installing 2016, i gave up after a few days of dicking around and trying to get a PC to deal with it.
otherwise its the "cloud" and its crap, and not much use when you have the internet connection i have.
then theres the whole workflow of it that really is utterly useless. better to just learn the ins and outs of cad and enjoy being able to change things without having to erase half your work.
only reason stoppingme from using it is that on a resume no one knows about freecad but everyone knows about solidworks
Nice tutorial. What about blender 4.0 ? Have you tried ?
So the only advantage of FreeCAD over fusion is that it is open source and offline, all the features are slower or worse. It can only handle simple sketches, you can only use a sketch once, things break when you edit previous steps, etc.
Fusion is a toy compared to FreeCAD. None of what you say is true. Why is your FreeCAD slow? Why do your sketches break? What machine have you got?
I am sure you have not much evolved from the "Hello World" in FreeCAD, otherwise you won't make such statements. You can reuse any sketch as often as you want and what do you mean by simple sketches?
You can make a sketch as complex as you like, if you use the sketch tool from the BIM workbench and NOT from the Part design workbench. I suggest to try harder and learn FreeCAD properly.
I am a former AutoDesk Inventor / Fusion guy and will never go back to proprietary software.
FreeCAD does everything I need and that's why I stopped using Fusion all together.
Surely, FreeCAD works differently from Fusion. So, learn your new tools and stop spreading misinformation.
solidworks has a cheap license for the maker package
Ooof I know people love to give free software passes, but this video alone shows that Freecad will have a lot of massive painpoints and on the gimp vs photoshop to blender vs maya scale this seems more in the middle than in the blender vein of things.
I feel like with multiple pieces of free software like this the patch that will supposedly fix all the issues is always around the corner. I did see a fork of freecad that showed potential by caring a lot more about quality of life features that I guess freecad sees as nice to have when nice to have in software saves you hours of work.
Just the having to have multiple sketches for each extrude by itself is a deal breaker. I can just imagine how painful that is.
It's not as bad as it looks. When I first tried FreeCAD 5 or so years ago, it was much harder. Now it's very comfortable. Imagine where it'll be in 5 more years. I would suggest trying some simpler projects in FreeCAD every so often and see if you start to get it. Need to come with an open mind though.
@@MaximKachurovskiy I dont think ita about getting it, this isnt a difference in paradigm as much as a worse workflow.
I feel like "get it" only really applies when a difference is purposeful rather than an absence or difficiency.
One of the reasons I use Fusion is because the idea of wasting my limited time sounds extremely exoensive, currently much more expensive than a Fusion license.
I dont even make money on my Fusion use yet, but I know that given my limited time, the longwr something takes, the higher the chance of failiure due to being incomplete, which might be a me thing but I imagine many are like that, so having to get used to a slower system sounds far from ideal.. very far.
Funnily enough, I don't recommend Fusion360 electronics for simular reasons, as it has excessive painpoints and there, I think Kicad appears supirior even though Im just starting with both on the electronics side of things.
you didnt use the symmetric constraint in fusion because it's literally ass in fusion
It just feels like using CATIA
My choice so far is onshape, but I'm only a hobby users.
Also, FreeCAD will keep improving and after few years all the CAD the packages will be, for all practical reasons, more or less the same, as it happened with cellphones.
In the other hand, the main CAD companies keep splitting their packages to charge more. Licenses, tokenization, and other marketing BS (including AI) when in reality they are not much better than 10 years ago, just money grabbers.
Lions have used freecad for 6 years, so it must be time to try fusion 360. Being able to use your own revision control instead of autodesk's monetized repository is a win.
Okay ... What I learned from the video is that I won't go with either FreeCAD or Fusion360 but Solidworks 😅😅
Wow, that one is expensive 🫰
@@MaximKachurovskiy Yeah I was kinda joking 🤭
I'm already using a mix of FreeCAD and Fusion360 😬
@@MaximKachurovskiy Solidworks Maker edition is US$100/year. I get it for half with an EAA membership. There is also Solid Edge Community Edition, but have not tried it yet.
@kellyjordan, I tried the SW maker addition for the CAM. $100 per year was something I could justify. I found the interface to be hot garbage and I donate that money to freecad now.
Plus, Dassault is just doing what Autodesk did... Free until they get it debugged and the put everything useful behind a pay wall.
1:17 _"sketching and dimension constraining are 2 diff ops"_
that's going to improve in fc-0.22 - see the video from mongo jellly solutions smth smth on youtube
also, why are you _not_ using shortcuts? the open source applications are much much more keyboard friendlier than commercial bloat
it was excruciating to watch u doing so much back-&-forth with pointer
1:39 i like that the part to be extruded should be explicit, and construction lines are required. commercial bloats dumb down things way too much.
3:40 _"create a single sketch & extrude [diff parts of it] to different size"_
this technique of using a master sketch was available even in 2022 (v0.19/0.20) - but yeah, you will have to search some tutorial for it. it involves linking sketches or smth like that.
Good video, but im sticking with fusion360. To each their own
*Imagine how I feel coming from Rhino 3d, where EVERYTHING is easier. And I have 1 of two crap programs to choose from.*
NOTHING breaks in Rhino. I can add a hole at the very end of everything, and I have a hole.
It's tough, hang in there, it gets better
per me e meglio Freecad, lo uso per modellare pezzi che stampo in 3d, e piu difficile apprendere l'uso del programma rispetto a a Fusion 360, ma non necesita di connessioni, Freecad non ti perdona un errore grossolano e rischi di andare in crash e perdere il lavoro fatto se non salvato, Fusion lascia un anno di tempo prima di dover acquistare la licenza anche in hobby mode, questo non e imlicito e non é ben spiegato,per quello che devo fare io pagare anche solo 100 $ all anno e troppo, per questo ho imparato ad usare Freecad, ciao ciao Fusion..
FreeCAD is designed around a parametric workflow. And there it is one of the best tools. Trouble arises when you use it for an ahoc workflow and then try to change parameters afterwards.
I started with freecad and it is horrible.
This is how it goes. For every problem you have, there's a UA-cam video explaining how to do it - keep pushing and you'll get there.