Beware. This is done by Claude Code. Doesn’t mean it is bad, just something to be aware of before you spend money.
How does it compare to FreeCAD?
Much worse. But it can do 2d drawing which Freecad does not so so it has a niche.
Freecad is made by humans, this is made by claude
Is it? I though OpenCAD predates commercial LLMs by a few decades. Have they switched their development philosophy?
Edit: I mixed up OpenCAD and OpenSCAD.
You might have been thinking about openSCAD not openCAD?
Yeah that must be it.
Are you thinking of a different piece of software? This one is under a year old
That’s all I needed to hear.
How do you know?
Gross
Is it buggy slop or decent software?
You won’t get an answer from op they’re an unmarked repost bot.
Your question has already been answered, but I’m chiming in anyway, just to express my disappointment that this is not a viable alternative. Freecad is such a struggle for me to use; I used DesignSpark for 3d modeling and conceptualizing large builds, and I lost it when I migrated to Linux (wasn’t much of a loss, they were only making the free version worse). Freecad’s workflow is so foreign to me, and Blender doesn’t seem great for 3d modeling practical parts.
If you would’ve asked me 4 months ago I’d say the same. I come from industry standard software, so FreeCAD was barely usable if you have gotten used to some of the higher grade usability featuers. Skip a few months forward and FreeCAD development has ramped up as if it’s the cure to cancer. The features (especially usability ones) implemented in the last half a year brings it somewhat on par with what a trained engineer would expect.
For example last week they implemented automatically including reference geometry inside sketches, before you had to use a separate step to include them through a projection or intersection with the sketch plane. That is huge. I think in a few years FreeCAD will essentially be a feature complete industry standard CAD program.Thats great to hear! I’ll muster up the guts to check it out again, next time I need to model something.
Now if only I were a trained engineer…
I have been trying to get rid of Fusion 360 for a while. Any recommendations for someone who can use that to transition ro freecad?
I moved from Creo to FreeCAD. For a free software, FreeCAD is insanely good. But it’s clear that it is an enthusiast project with focus on functionality rather than UX and UI, allthough they are starting to improve on that too. It’s also clear that all industry grade software providers must headscout some of the smartest and most talented mathematicians and software engineers, which open source can simply not afford.
I took for granted how performant and flexible Creo is with things like chamfers and patterns. FreeCAD struggles in that regard hard, to the point where those steps have to be the last things in your workflow, otherwise the entire model lags out or even crashes.
Also, compared to FreeCAD, the actual constriction feature management seems like magic in Creo, it keeps way better track of the naming and numbering of references and minor changes to earlier elements transfer seamlessly to all newer ones. Meanwhile in FreeCAD adding even a single borehole into a surface retroactively (which shouldn’t influence anything else) completely breaks the model and all surfaces need to be reassigned by hand to all upstream elements.
Threads are another issue. I know cosmetic threads are super easy to do in Fusion, and are especially important for 3D printing. The most effective way to get cosmetic threads in FreeCAD is to use a plugin that gives you parametric rods, nuts and cutting tools and you just use a boolean operation to basically cut a thread into geometry. It works perfectly, but is simply really weird and unusual.
In general FreeCAD can do anything an industry standard CAD Programm can do, it will only take you 10 times longer and is 5 times more complicated. Sometimes the same operation will work on one edge, but not it’s exact copy. Sometimes a feature works on the selection, sometimes you get a seperate selection window for the feature. It’s clear that a lot of implementation happens without proper communication inside the FreeCAD team and therefore lacks in consistency.
But it seems that this year is going to be the year of FreeCAD as they significantly ramped up development and there are almost monthly improvements. They also make effort to unify features and improve consistency across board.
Your mentality needs to be that FreeCAD models are clunky and fragile and you essentially have to already know exactly what you want to design before even starting. It’s not a great tool for creative technical experimentation, for now at least.
I feel so much less alone after reading this. I don’t thing I’m completely absolved of responsibility, but maybe Freecad is also part of the issue.
Freecad can replace fusion for basic cad work. It does have some stability issues but overall it is perfectly usable. (Just don’t do anything with threads)
Blender is a shining example of great foss software doing powerful stuff, but it’s just not CAD software (and not meant to be).
There are some CAD-focused plug-ins available, but even with that, you are absolutely correct.
Freecad is more like fusion360 or inventor
Performance issues or primarily the way it requires to design something?
Mostly the latter. I taught myself to model by roughing out a shape with cubes and cylinders in the correct dimensions, then refining everything as needed. Freecad seems to require a fully baked 2D sketch before I can extruded anything into 3D. I’ve succeeded in that a couple of times, but its always been a struggle.
Honestly, the biggest hurdle is probably just immersing myself in the learning curve. I was regularly modeling stuff for work when I learned DesignSpark, but I don’t have much call for the skill lately.
Maybe check out Plasticity. It has a very generous 30 day trail and has a pay once - own forever perpetual license for about 120 bucks. It’s very far removed from the parametric design that is used for engineering applications but for creative modeling that is more numerically driven than something like Blender its perfect. It’s a very good middle ground between 3D modelling and CAD design. It’s very fast and intuitive compared to FreeCAD and runs natively on Linux.
How does this compare to fusion360? Us noobie hobbiests need a foss verson of that so badly.
I don’t know this, but I moved from fusion to the new version of FreeCAD, and I am really enjoying it!
Does this function the same/similar as AutoCAD? I’ve used some paid alternatives that functioned exactly like AutoCAD, and I’ve tried librecad, which I thought would be the same, but for some reason it was more tedious to use. It’s been a while, so I can’t remember what made it harder to use, but it’d be great for a drop in replacement for AutoCAD.
Haven’t tried it. But from their website yeah, apparently they try to mimic Autocad.
Good to know, I’ll give it a try this week and see how it goes
If it matters to you, someone else pointed out that it’s heavily built by Claude.
I honestly hope no professional engineer trusts this shit with anything important. Ever.
It will definitely play a role. I’ll still try it out and see how it goes, but I’ll weigh my options. Can’t say I’m pumped about that part
