FreeCAD 1.0 Who's using it?

  For me I don't have enough experience with FreeCAD to tell yet if something is a quirk of the program
or if it's something I didn't do. As I have said before I have used Fusion 360 for years. I don't dare mess
with nightly builds because I don't know enough about coding and I would probably make things worse.
That said I look forward to the day when I can throw Windows out the window. LOL

I spent 20 minutes trying to sketch a simple part to revolve and gave up after the autoconstraint engine completely hosed up the sketch. They really really need to put work into the sketcher and the UIX , it is still god awful to use. Hell I am willing to donated money on a monthly basis to get out of using fusion360 at this point, but there doesn't seem to be any seriousness from freecad developers about working on it fulltime.

I've been working with FreeCAD for quite a lot of years on hobby project, It's OK-ish, and even though you can do amazing thnigs with it, it's not my favourite program.

I used FreeCAD 1.0 for a quite elaborate self made drawong of a CNC milling machine I've been working on (of and on) for 4+ years now, and with all changes I make on the drawing it becomes slower. This is now to a point that it's starting to annoy while working on that drawing. Loading time of the drawing changed from around 30s in FreeCAD V0.22 (just a few months ago, nearly the same drawing) to over two minutes in FreeCAD V1.0. Apparently this has something to do with the way the topological naming thing was "fixed", but at the moment I'm regretting working on that drawing in V1.0. I'm thinking about reverting to a backup and redo the changes I made in an older 0.22.

I also have one very big drawing, which is 7 drawings of CNC machines imported in the same drawing to compare them, and even in FreeCAD 0.xx that drawing takes over 5 minutes just to load. That would go towards half an hour just to start FreeCAD if this trend continues. Go figure.

smc.collins:

I spent 20 minutes trying to sketch a simple part to revolve and gave up after the autoconstraint engine completely hosed up the sketch. They really really need to put work into the sketcher and the UIX

I find the sketcher in FreeCAD quite nice. Like everything in FreeCAD, things could be done quicker and with less mouse clicks, but overall the sketcher is quite functional. It is also easy to mess up in the sketcher. It took me quite a while to learn what sort of constructs to avoid in the sketcher. As a general rule, build up the sketch in small increments, and do not have to many unconstrained items. You can't expect to learn a tool such as FreeCAD's sketcher in 20 minutes.


 

I am also using FreeCAD V1.0. I have been using FreeCad for a couple of years but only fo simple stuff.

I just started modelling a 1920 three cylinder radial motorcycle engine in FreeCad V1.0, and decided to spilt each component into it's own file, as a component like the Piston often needs multiple solids (patterns, core moulds etc). My plan it to combine the parts in a separate assembly file. I did this as I notice that the performance took a nose dive while modelling the piston core mould.

I am getting the feeling that this could be avoid with more rigourous modelling. I noticed on one part I made some error in a loft, which generated with incomplete facets, and the performance took a real hit fo all other operations after that. I have no idea what is actually wrong with that loft, but when I backed up and modelled that feature differently, the performance hit went away.

forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=93820

FreeCad is certainly way less tolerant of user deviating from the one true path of how you are "supposed" to model in it. I am also using way more refeence planes than I even needed in AutoCad V13, Catia, Inventor or Onshape inb the past.

As here, the support of the Freecad forum is outstanding.
Mark

  looks like I will have to cruise around the Freecad forum for a little bit. The Latest drama of what
Bambu Lab is pulling has re-emphasized the need to keep up to date on the open source software.
It seems to be the only way to keep out of the absolute money vacuum of today's mainstream
industries.

I found Freecad is one of the few free cad programs that don’t need an internet connection.
I used other free programs like google sketch and others. Google sketch free only works on the internet. Others just became paid versions.
I chose Freecad I because I know it will remain free and it does not require internet.

For doing simple stuff like brackets and everything else you do on a plasma cutter Freecad is easy to use.
There was a steep learning curve but it was absolutely worth it.

Using letters on free am seems a bit complicated so I use Inkscape.

Sometimes I design a part export it to svg and add some letters.

Constraints on the sketcher was a bit difficult to learn. After watching some YouTube videos I got a better understanding and absolutely love it.

Spreadsheet functions are also excellent.

For example you can design a flansch. Link a spreadsheet to it and change the size number of holes etc by just entering the numbers in the spreadsheet.

well for me I will have to get more proficient in using Freecad. Now more then ever  especially now since the site
diyrcwings.com/app seems to be permanently down. (I used it to generate the g-code for my foam wings)
fortunately there is a workbench add-on that is available for Freecad by Shkolik. called Foamcut. it looks
like it's 4 axis plus a rotational axis. I will have to give it a shot and see how I like it. Anything else wants to
require Windows.
link to the github   github.com/Shkolik/Foamcut

yeah right!! we use freecad to translate cad our paid software chokes on.
The cad transfer is not complete but saved us with some stuff from acad inventor files. great stp file reads and dxf also.
Have to hand it to all the people involved contribute cnc programing all the way to re-bar design. not to mention surface modeling and solids with history to match
many high $$$$$% systems. thanks freecad you save us many times.