วีดีโอ

I just meddled through a comment section with the standard "FreeCad good" vs "FreeCad bad" garbage... While I'm still not a FreeCad user, I'm glad to have your channel around to remind myself that people can be civil, and that this program is honestly pretty cool when you get someone skilled enough to wield it properly. I'm not sure if this makes much sense, but thank you for your content!

As someone who put a weeks worth time in cad programs to pick which to learn I can say that all of them are designed around idea of taking something that's intuitive, easy to understand so that anyone could start from the get go and making sure that in CAD SOFTWARE NONE OF THAT EXISTS. CAD SOFTWARE is unintuitive horror as someone who had only played with tinker cad I've tried few of the popular ones and everything REQUIRES TUTORIAL! This is insane in 2024, naturally those programs are decades old and industry standard but I can't imagine how much industry have lost in users, profits and potential workers because of how stupid and anti user these programs are. I had 3day weekend off and just now turned off my of because I can't make a damn leafspring without TUTORIAL ! I'M done with all of that I'll find a way to keep using tinker cad but none of that BS thank you

Thank you for the tutorial! As you say, FC is quirky... At first I could not get the geometry of the fusion to select from within the sketch (at 2:55). This is because in my version of FC, there is no link to "Create Sketch" from the Part menu. So, I went to Part Design and clicked "Create Sketch" like I usually do. This automatically placed the sketch inside an active body, and since the fusion was outside the active body its geometry was unreachable. To fix the problem I went to sketcher and clicked "Create Sketch", which calls Sketcher_NewSketch. This is different from "Create Sketch" in Part Design which calls PartDesign_NewSketch. The icons look identical, and I never noticed the difference before today. Hope this helps someone.

I hope that you and @teachingtech have seen the news regarding the "light at the end of the tunnel" for the topological naming problem!

Excellent! Thank you for this, finding information about this specific type of alignment was next to impossible and led me through a path of confusion, but your video is clear and concise!

Thank you for this video, what you have explained I had partially deduced by sheer number of hours stumbling around and testing, but you removed many of my doubts, I thought I was the only one being confused by the plethora of attachment modes. 👍

Thanks for the comparison, and Michael's excellent work. In my company we enitrelly changed to Freecad a couple of years ago, the reason being not the price, but the attitude - the very thing people blame. The thing called "intuitive way" is not always welcome in design applications. Parameters are the professional approach. We have lots of designs where the workpiece should be modified in the afterlife to fit it to different situations. and we found Freecad was the best in this regard. In the notes below the expression "learning curve" is used like a curse. It may be so in weekend projects, but learning was not a problem where I came from. I find it scary that every problem, that cannot be solved in half an hour, is frustrating for today's people. It took a long time to me to learn Freecad at the beginning, but now I can get a junior engineer up to the work in no time. We had Freecad in test for long, and even today, I keep returning to the point, should we change platform, but the answer is no. The last thing I want, people being frustrated with a tool, because it must not stand in the way of work. But they don't. Au contraire, they start to use it for ther 3D hobby projects. Last, but not least: FreeCAD is a community project, and members of the community develop it on their own. I don't think they wanted to compete with million-dollar CAD projects, but the fact that FreeCAD is now compared to those, is self-explaining. Ondsel is another step in the tipical evolution curve of open software. (See KiCAD). It is solid finding that open software has much slower ramp-up than the proprietary alternative, but once the open one reaches the same workout, it has much longer life span. We were left with expensive softwares become "end-of-life" countless times - and is frustrating. (I am excited to see the same comparison in 2-3 years.)

Sorry but you have proven Michael’s - and others - points. You just wasted time demonstrating the FreeCAD is indeed clunky, regressive, non-conforming to standard CAD software ui and ux conventions and FreeCAD takes considerably longer to do something that takes half the time in Solidworks, fusion or OnShape. You love FreeCAD and you have invested time to work around freecads foibles. Good for you. But don’t be surprised that user take up continues to be shockingly low for a FOSS project because unless things change, that’s what will continue to happen.

I have been lately modeling my own and practice models in FC, Ondsel, Onshape and Fusion. The FC and Onshape sketcher seem the most similar, Fusion has the most unique sketcher to me. FC does need an extra dose of "the will and the way" but getting more productive over time. Want to spend some time with the Realthunder latest build and see how that is progressing. Thanks for the video, you always have something interesting.

The icons displayed as a video feature are awesome for on the run tutorials, consider zooming in for greater detail at node for model development, as viewing on a mobile device you dont need un necessary ui screen space. The Glass workbench also will take some of the jumpiness out, and the Modern W.B is also a necessity for the new user, or people without a photographic memory.

I learn alot from your videos - you do a great job

awesome

Good video, as someone still learning, it taught me a few new tricks.

A wonderful capable program, and free, there can be no complaints. But it is a totally cryptic way of working, nuts, it's the 'implementation' of the way you have to work with it that is the total put off. Just by way of example in say a direct modeling system the second example for a hobbyist, like myself, can generate it perfectly in about a minute, that's not because it can do it better than FreeCAD, just the 'implementation' UI. Such a shame, that UI wants tearing down and completely bringing up to date and then FreeCAD would be fantastic, free, and most of all 'useable', because as it is there is just not enough time in a day/life to get even the most basic shapes done, BUT, it CAN already do it, which is the shame of things. Many Thks for the vid but what you created here I can do those both examples in 2 - 3mins and I am a newbee to cad.

Yes, FreeCAD does things differently from other CAD systems and there is a steep learning curve too, but once mastered, FreeCAD is all you ever need. The world's only, parametric and standalone 3D CAD system.

I think the main issue isn't going from fusion to freeCad. When I started doing hobby cad work I tried FreeCad and literally nothing did what I thought it would do. I tried to learn for a few hours but nothing worked. It just kept screaming errors at me. Then I switched to fusion360 and from never have opened the software to have a parametric flowerpot printing on my 3D printer took less than 30 minutes. I had made so much progress in the next 30 minutes while it was printing that I could basically throw it away before it could finish to print the next version. My goal is not to learn CAD. It's to make things that I want. and fusion360 lets me do that.

Stepped over this by accident. Thank you. As a FC beginner didn't know I can use symmetry constraint this way (used to use construction geometry). I will stick to FC mainly for reasons said at the end - it is good enough for my hobby use. (looking forward to have topology naming improved)

A well presented argument for free-cad. If you want to drive a powerful machine it is useful to know how it works. My biggest praise for free-cad is that it is a stand alone, off cloud programme. My internet connection is good SOMETIMES.

One of the points you don't mention about having the license change and locking your work up. What about all the hours you spent learning the software? Not just the initial learning curve, but potentially years for use and honing your skills. Next thing you no longer have access to the software. You didn't just lose the base of your designs, you just got years of learning immediately made unusable. Now you have to pick something else and learn it. Oh, and if you are a strick user of Linux and open source you now have that against you. I've been using Freecad, kicad, ect for longer than I remember. About 2 years ago I deleted the windows partition on my computer when I went to boot into it and the updates hung it for 12 hours. Got a System76 about 4 months ago, run Gentoo on it, build Freecad and Kicad from git sources I update every few weeks. Being that I no longer use OSS because I can't afford anything else I try to donate to those projects regularly. Thank you so much for your contribution to Freecad! These video are vital to the project's success.

The key takeaway from both videos is that while the other CAD software allow the user to click-and-draw, FreeCAD requires the user to carefully plan ahead, and place his object in the 3D space carefully so that we can use the Origin and axes. (or he could have used drivers to place the centerline in the middle of the rectangle.). Apart from planning, it also requires a lot of extra steps, such as creating the same elements twice. Further, this paradigm would not occur to a user of other CAD software, because he can draw multiple shapes in the same space, so he won't have to use the Origin and 3D space axes.

I tried to learn 3D CAD on FreeCAD 5 years ago and it was painful. I moved to Fusion 360 and was able to cross to "the other side"where I could design everything my mind visualised. FreeCAD makes so much more sense now and this video has inspired me to endure the pain of it's clunkiness instead of the pain of being constantly shafted by Autodesk and it's ever increasing extortion attempts. Cloud and subscription software is for suckers.

Your video sucks. Its hard to follow. I did this a few months agobut its a pain inbthe ass. And if there was other ones to watch i would.

THANK YOU SO MUCH ! for this *Great Vid* You have earned one more subscriber Cheers !, from Chile. South America This is John.

Excellent!

I just stumbled upon this and after seeing the open response for Teaching Tech, I really think the FreeCad community has massive issues with taking criticism. Like glaring, blinking, honking dirty great big red flag issues with taking criticism. Its not this video in solitude that has me coming to this conclusion to be clear.

this was great. along with teaching techs video, it was very insightful. i am still unsure as to what CAD programm to use, as i don't earn any money with this, yet. As FreeCAD is free and works on many operating systems, even the most niche ones, thanks to open source, for me it would be an amazing tool to use. i mean, i managed to switch from Milkshape3D to Blender 2.79, how much harder can it be?

I will be honest, the moment I see a video trying to defend free cad, with free cad open and 3 errors messages on the screen I have seen enough. I would suggest you to switch for only 7 days with real effort to software like onshape or fusion360, give them a real shot, understand their logic and then try to go back on free cad. I am quite sure you will never touch again free cad after that.

Keep in mind, that he showed this on an outdated version (0.21.0) - stable today is 0.21.2. Seems that the next release 0.22 has massive improvements (as usual). Updating to the latest version is highly recommended for FreeCAD-users. To be honest, in the beginning FreeCAD was a bit frustrating due to the steep learning curve. Today it's my first choose.

Great video!!

Wow, this is really cool! I could see this being part of another workbench, or just apart of freecad itself, it's very useful!

I think it’s great that FreeCAD exists. It definitely seems full featured, but the learning curve is definitely steep compared to something like Shapr3D, which I’ve recently started using. For hobbyists I think putting up with the learning curve is the right decision but for people who don’t know it and want to create items for production there’s options to get you there more easily.

This is awesome, wish there was a windows installation portion but I guess I'll try and figure it out 😅

How about a helix, on a helix, on a helix, on a helix ...? Ya know, a fractal helix!

Amazing! As developer i first tried these proprietary easy ones, but idk - i didn't like them, for me FreeCAD was intuitive - everything should go step-by-step just like coding/programming.

Is there a reason you don't use part design while every single tutorial I've seen uses that work bench.

W0w, this is fantastic!

trying to make the same symmetrical constrain at 6:38 and my free cad fail miserably "Redundant constrain (5)"

People should just use what they are comfortable with and what suits their needs. I use blender for pretty much everything, including technical work. You can easily have a non-destructive workflow for most things in blender besides text for some reason (And I bet there is a solution to this using geometry nodes). Sure there will be cases where Blender can't do something as gracefully as CAD constraints, but you can usually get around it, if everything fails there is a Python interpreter that you can do pretty much anything with. But a person comming from a CAD suite would not find Blender useful. I like to prototype all sorts of things, and I want to do it in the weekend or something usually, for me Blender is THE tool for this kind of stuff, its precise enough and fast enough using a CSG workflow. I don't think in 2D sketches and constraints when I design, I think in shapes and function, so to me I find Blender more useful than any CAD program i tried.

Literally a CAD package designed by a committee and everything about it reflects that. It is the "linux" of CAD packages 🙂(and I've been a linux user since the beginning).

I rarely comment on videos but have to say this is a well balanced look at a couple of issues that were brought up by the other channel. I have been looking for a cad software that I could use to create designs for my personal 3d printing. As someone who trained as A Mechanical Fitter I love the idea of being able to draw something and then make it in whatever material. I don't have a lathe or a mill so I satisfy my need by 3d print. Looking for a cad package I have tried nearly every one I could find. I really like Fusion and joined a course on Udemy, my ability to draw mechanical drawings by hand didn't seem to translate very well!! I love Shapr on the ipad and Mac, and looked at a bunch of others like Rhino, TurboCAD, and Ketchup. Some have limited free options. Most are subscription. What if I one day want to sell what I have designed as an income? Probably unlikely but what if? I would have to sell a boat load of stuff to even pay the A$ cost for F360 - $995, I don't think I found one that was less than $500. FreeCAD is free, I can use it in any way I like, and unlike a lot of others I think it's great that it doesn't do everything for you, this is how you learn, not by having everything done for you automatically, never understanding why.

I found it very useful, I started with Freecad and you and mango-jelly helped a lot. I did NOT find it hard to start using it and even have a patent on a design made with FreeCad 😁👍

Another fantastic video! Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for taking the time for the thoughtful reply to Michael's video. I'm just a 3D printing hobbyist and I currently use Fusion360 and have been growing more concerned that the free personal license will either disappear or become constrained to the point of being unusable. Quite frankly, I'm generally concerned about any cloud based solution. I have many home automation devices that are perfectly good, except the cloud provider died or shut them down. I don't want that to happen to my 3D designs. I have more time than money these days, so think I will take a shot at learning FreeCAD.

I'll say the same thing here: FreeCAD looks and works like a horse designed by a committee. The fact you have enough experience with the thing to work around its faults absolutely does not matter.

Let me state right off the bat - I like FreeCAD, and I especially appreciate that it is open source. I am, at this point, devoted to it, and don't see myself leaving it to use another program. IMHO, the two hardest problems when working with FreeCAD is workflow, and the naming problem. It took me a long time (and I still have issues) to understand how to approach a drawing the way FreeCAD wants me to do it. The other thing I learned is to not ever directly reference faces of solids to anything else. Reference to other sketch geometry in a body is okay, but the naming problem will make your life miserable when, somewhere down the road, your drawing will break and the mess will be a major headache. I even had this problem when just referencing a distance to another object. Also, boolean operations, as well as combining primitives with part bodies, etc. can become confusing fast, especially if you do not do these things in the order FreeCAD wants them. Then there are the funky fillets that, a lot of times, don't work as intended, even when you understand the limitations of the feature. I've learned a lot of things and how to do them, but there was and still is a lot of frustration along the way. There is pretty much zero intuitiveness - you have to just know FreeCAD and how to do it. I want to say, over time, keeping sketches simple, learning more instinctively how to set up constraints, and using dimension variables and spreadsheets has helped a lot in solving a lot of problems and streamlining work.

FreeCAD is horrific

Came here because I was curious how the filet in the second design was done correctly for the full size. The workaround is what I do regularly too that kind of freaks me out. If I want to create a fully parametric design I don't want to set the value for the fillet to something fixed. So for me it's creating (sort of) a master-sketch with random lines I use for creating named references and later using them in the design (or using a data table (forgot if this is the correct name)) via the function handle. (Which is where I would love to see a possibility to directly enter the variable-name instead of clicking the icon first). Anyways, like the video response to Tom Sanladerer this was a fair, acknowledeging and non-judging reply and I wish more people would do them this way!

I would never ever rely on proprietary software for anything I care about. That includes any creative creation, like programming or CAD. If it isn't free as in freedom, then it's not a viable alternative

Wow what a great reply where everyone learns something, ❤

One thing I like particularly about freecad, and I don't see this mentioned much, is how it helps teach best practice. Coming from fusion 360, I would frequently find myself breaking my more complex models when I needed to make a simple design change. I found freecad's unique workflow and more rigid input requirements, really emphasize designing with intent. Previously I was focused mostly on what would work to simply create a geometry. After freecad I now focus on the intent of those geometries which allows me to better constrain my models for improved robustness. I don't think it's all just the fact that it's a harder program to work with either. It really seems like it's easier to design with intent than with others cad packages. From my interactions with the forum, it appears that is a primary philosophy of development. Yes, the learning curve is steep, but the extra work is not a waste. If anything I feel the time I spent learning fusion 360 was a significant waste after they locked it down so much that I decided to move on. I'm comfortable with freecad knowing the time I invest is not going to be a waste, and what happened with fusion will never happen to me again.