FreeCAD 1.0 Who's using it?

So not that long ago FreeCAD V0.22 AKA V1.0 was released.as the stable version. I have been using Autodesk Fusion 360.
for years now and for the most part it works fine. That said with Windows 10 being EOL this coming October and Fusion 360
not officially released for Linux ( plus all the B.S. with Win.11 NO THANK YOU! )  I started fumbling my way around FreeCAD.
I have played with the program in the past V0.19, V0.20, V0.21 but no real motivation to truly learn it. Going from one to the
other definitely has a learning curve. How about everyone else what has been your experience using the new FreeCAD?

Thanks tommylight I will have to look back at his channel . Last time I checked there it mainly had stuff from 4 or so
years ago. I wasn't sure if his tutorials were going to be relevant on V1.0.

Been using it ever since I got my 3D printer for models.
Used the path bench a few time with success for basic 2d stuff.
Mango Jelly Solutions has some good tutorials as well.

Thank you cornholio. I have watched a few of his tutorials. My only complaint with them is early on he uses
shortcuts and such, At least the tutorials I have seen. As great as it is to know those shortcuts if someone is
just starting out learning CAD/CAM those shortcuts can become cumbersome to remember.

tommylight wrote:

There is a CAM version of Blender if you feel like stepping into the deep end, no idea if it is still being worked on. Blender is a monster! And it's free, despite huge offerings to buy them out.
 

I actually have the download for that one but have yet to have time to go through and learn/use it.

I've played with FreeCAD a little bit, but not much with the new 1.0 ver.
forum.linuxcnc.org/38-general-linuxcnc-q...-clearing-hsm#141098

I've not used the new version enough to say how much it is much improved over the old in usability. But I is noticably less buggy, and naming of some of the tools makes more sense.

That said, while very capable, usability is still far from simple with a steap learning curve. You can still run into a lot of "can't get there from here" situations.

Was the topological naming issue solved. That was the reason I stopped using freecad some years back.
apart from that it was quite nice to work with.

I guess a quick google would tell me this but I prefer answers from actual users.

I've been using the weekly builds for some time. TNP is not entirely solved, but I've slowly learned (after making some models for the third time) to be better at constructing models to avoid TNP issues. Worth the effort to reference things as far up the tree as possible, build reference planes, use parameter sets, etc. Overall I think the CAD is pretty good, once you get used to it. The last couple months leading up to the 1.0 release saw a huge improvement in stability, which is really nice. FAR fewer crashes. My only other real mechanical CAD experience is Rhino, so I can't really compare on that front- just being parametric is such a huge step up.

The CAM workbench in FreeCAD is both amazing and frustrating. It's awesome that it has (eg) adaptive toolpaths that you seemingly can't get in any CAM package under ~$3k USD. The new path/stock simulator is WAY faster/better than it was in older version. Plus, Linux native is great.

A lot of other things are maddeningly close to working well, but need some very specific workarounds to make work. Profiling open contours very notably falls in this category. You can make it work, but have to build a bunch of extra geometry to do so in my experience. It's on my to-look-at-fixing list...

On the up side, my experience fixing things (adaptive toolpaths not using the stock model you provide- pull request pending due to freeze prior to 1.0 release) was that it's shockingly easy. That fix took... a few hours, going into it mostly cold? So if you know Python and/or C++, and see something that seems dumb and annoys you, it might be worth looking into just fixing it.