It's been improving rapidly. The upcoming (imminently) 1.1 has a large amount of modern UI affordances, such as on-canvas gizmos that at times actually are easier to use than e.g. the Fusion ones. I'm a heavy Fusion user, but for me FreeCAD is nearly there now and the improvement over 1.0.x is massive.
There's a lot more to do, but my feeling is the project is taking UI/UX design much more seriously than it has in the past, with the ramp-up of an internal design-focused team etc. I get that feeling from reading the weekly progress updates and MR discussions.
I'm very optimistic for the future of FreeCAD personally. I think it's a great time to contribute if you are interested in making UI/UX better as well because there's much higher interest in that kind of work now. I think it's close to having its own Blender/KiCAD moment.
The UI has an awkward learning curve and some tools are weird, but it has become a rather solid CAD. Don't discount it in its current state, despite its warts.
Can't agree, I'm a complete newbie in CAD, and after I opened FreeCAD I didn't know what to do at all. Watched one youtube video covering all the basics and I can design whatever I want with confidence. Besides being free – it's very intuitive and great piece of software in my opinion
I disagree. If you switch to the Part Design workbench, it's basically the exact same workflow as SolidWorks. Draw a sketch, add constraints, extrude / revolve / fillet, etc.
Yes they have some unconventional names for certain operations, like "pad" instead of "extrude", and yes there's a confusingly-similarly-named "Part" workbench for doing CSG-style CAD, and yes it takes a bit of practice to get good at it. But it's not next to impossible.
I'm just a hobbyist with a 3D printer, but after watching a few tutorials it seems quite simple if you're only using the sketcher and part design 90% of the time.
Yeah I just end up using Fusion 360. But depending on a freebie for hobbyists that could be withdrawn any time it's a bit worrying. I wish there were good visual tools.
I don't like browser based and blender is too focused on animation (I'm more into 3D printing) so I haven't found a good FOSS alternative. FreeCAD isn't it anyway.
personally exited to check it out for real constructive-solid modeling, as opposed to emulating that workflow over OpenCascade's (fickle but otherwise lovely) BREP modeling (ie. edges & faces) via build123d (which has been great but is increasingly vibe-coded :/)
I've been "vibe coding" with OpenSCAD with good results! OpenSCAD will automatically detect changes in the current open file and reload it, so I can use VS Code (with the OpenSCAD extension) to vibe code with Claude, and watch the changes appear on the OpenSCAD screen
This thread has turned into a great resource! build123d has been my favourite conceptually so far (it's just Python) but vcad looks very clean too. I like the abuse of + and - in both of these for booleans.
Okay, but unless you choose to download the Windows executable, compiling from source is very difficult. Many people won't accept the Snap option on an otherwise open-source platform.
This project improves on SolveSpace, but it does this by requiring dozens of mutually conflicting libraries. I create CAD videos, but for my students I decided against this project after seeing how difficult it was to compile.
A FlatPak installer might help with this installation issue.
Again, the Windows executable gets around these issues, for people still willing to put up with Windows.
Dune3d comes off like a reskin of SolveSpace. SolveSpace is pretty awesome, so that's not a knock, per se. I'll leave it to somebody with more experience to fill in what value Dune3D adds beyond SolveSpace.
Also check out modelrift.com which is based on openscad foundation. See the dynamic customizer which allows to edit any model parameter, re-render and get .stl: https://modelrift.com/models/customizable-liquid-funnel - it works _completely_ in your browser by using WASM
I have used this for throwing together some models for 3D printing. I've found it very intuitive, though I'm not sure how ergonomic it would be for complex assemblies.
I really like the space-key based command access and default shortcuts for all the commands.
Would love to see a quick video demo showcasing the features, look and feel of the software. The same team made horizon eda, and I wasn't able to find videos on youtube about it that were newer than 2022, so I never gave it a shot either.
So this is a smudge of like 4 projects? Huh. Definitely interested, but I wonder about the longevity of the system. That's one thing about the code cad systems I like: it's pretty easy to port code from one to another.
In case anyone is wondering, Dune3D as a flatpak is about 33mb. FreeCAD is 354mb. I enjoy having simple solutions that get simple things done. Will definitely give Dune3D a try.
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Code-based
- CadQuery - https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery/
- build123d - https://github.com/gumyr/build123d
- OpenSCAD - https://openscad.cloud/openscad/
GUI (browser-based)
- Cadmium (abandoned, cool idea) - https://mattferraro.dev/posts/cadmium
There's a lot more to do, but my feeling is the project is taking UI/UX design much more seriously than it has in the past, with the ramp-up of an internal design-focused team etc. I get that feeling from reading the weekly progress updates and MR discussions.
I'm very optimistic for the future of FreeCAD personally. I think it's a great time to contribute if you are interested in making UI/UX better as well because there's much higher interest in that kind of work now. I think it's close to having its own Blender/KiCAD moment.
Also all of the software mentioned above has very little UI/UX and also ambition compared to FreeCAD.
Yes they have some unconventional names for certain operations, like "pad" instead of "extrude", and yes there's a confusingly-similarly-named "Part" workbench for doing CSG-style CAD, and yes it takes a bit of practice to get good at it. But it's not next to impossible.
I don't like browser based and blender is too focused on animation (I'm more into 3D printing) so I haven't found a good FOSS alternative. FreeCAD isn't it anyway.
SolveSpace - https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace
guile scheme, bindings in Rust and Python
personally exited to check it out for real constructive-solid modeling, as opposed to emulating that workflow over OpenCascade's (fickle but otherwise lovely) BREP modeling (ie. edges & faces) via build123d (which has been great but is increasingly vibe-coded :/)
discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319406
a real constructive solid library (as opposed to emulation via modeling), with
Awesome because you can build a model, expose the parameters, and allow web users to generate a model to fit their parameters.
This project improves on SolveSpace, but it does this by requiring dozens of mutually conflicting libraries. I create CAD videos, but for my students I decided against this project after seeing how difficult it was to compile.
A FlatPak installer might help with this installation issue.
Again, the Windows executable gets around these issues, for people still willing to put up with Windows.
1.2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958
1.1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068
1.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758
(unfortunately, no discussion for 1.3, so I guess this stands in for 1.4)
I really like the space-key based command access and default shortcuts for all the commands.
In case anyone is wondering, Dune3D as a flatpak is about 33mb. FreeCAD is 354mb. I enjoy having simple solutions that get simple things done. Will definitely give Dune3D a try.
Ofc. Let's reinvent the wheel, b/c improving the existing SW would be "too much effort", and btw NIH.
Doofus.