Recently I’ve been having feelings about moving away from Fusion 360. The combination of cloud app / filesystem and their demonstrated willingness to remove features and add arbitrary limitations (eg. 10 editable model limit) makes me feel uneasy about using it. To be clear I’m grateful that AutoDesk provide a free license at all, and it’s an incredible piece of software, but I have a sense of vulnerability while using and honing my skills in it. If you’ve ever rented a house you’ll know the feeling - you quite don’t feel like it’s really your home, if the landlord wants to make renovate or redecorate you don’t have any choice and you could be evicted at any moment.
So I tried FreeCAD. At first, I have to say that it felt a little like stepping out of a spaceship (Fusion) and banging rocks together like a caveman. It’s not that you can’t do (most) of the same things as an enterprise CAD package, but the killer feature of Fusion is the level of intuitiveness and “it just works” that makes FreeCAD seem like trying to write Latin.
After a week of on-and-off learning I was not sure I wanted to continue. Even after getting comfortable with the basics, frustration levels would spike to 11 sometimes. The main issue I kept running into was that altering a previous feature would break everything that came after, requiring a varying amount of work to fix. The FreeCAD wiki suggests ways to mitigate this but many of them are un-intuitive and/or inconvenient. After some googling this seems to be caused by a pretty difficult to solve issue called the “Topological Naming Problem” (where FreeCAD can’t keep track of surfaces / edges / vertexes in a stable fashion when features are changed). Then I came across this blog post that pointed out a fix has actually been developed earlier this year. A developer by the name of RealThunder has created a fork of FreeCAD called “Link Branch” which can track topology in a (more) stable fashion.
I tried this branch and was blown away by how much more usable it is. Not only can it handle changes to past features almost perfectly, but I can create multiple bodies from a single sketch (not possible before) and there are other UI tweaks that make creating features easier such as the ability to preview fillets and chamfers at the same time as selecting their edges. I’m not totally sure which of these features are unique to Link branch vs which might be pre-release in the main branch, but certainly the topology naming fix is unique to Link.
So if you have tried FreeCAD in the past and been frustrated, or if Fusion’s past free license changes or price increases are making you uneasy, give the Link Branch a try! Downloads are available in the releases page.
To be clear I’m grateful that AutoDesk provide a free license at all, and it’s an incredible piece of software, but I have a sense of vulnerability while using and honing my skills in it.
No, nope, nope, nope. Abolish this line of thinking right now. Any company that employs the predatory licensing tactics like those AutoDesk uses are not worthy of one single synapse’s worth of your continued thought. Fuck them. Shed not a single tear. They’re not giving you anything; they’re trying to lock you in as a future revenue source. Thus you have nothing to be grateful for, other than the bullet you’ve now dodged. You are Lot. Walk away and don’t look back, lest you turn into a pillar of salt.
I don’t usually get into this sort of Stallman style FOSS rant, but the behavior of the major players in the commercial modeling space – especially AutoDesk and SolidWorks/Dassault – is just exceptionally bullshit. Pandora’s box is already open on the hardware; any fool with thumbs, a credit card, and internet access can either buy or build an actual 3D printer. So instead they’ll do anything to lock the software side of this wonderful technology in their own proprietary, pay-to-subscribe box.
The Topological Naming Problem has been a thorn in the side of FreeCAD users since the dawn of time time, and while some work was put into the 0.2x release to address this (previous versions were even worse) it’s obviously still not perfect. For anyone not comfortable keeping track of forks and splits and unofficial releases, the intent for the Topo Naming fix developed in this release is for it to be incorporated back into the main line release… eventually. Also, even the most recent release of Realthunder’s fork is one major revision behind the main line release, and also has not been updated since the beginning of this year.
Despite all of this, FreeCAD along with all of its quirks and foibles represents an incredibly important bulwark against keeping a critical aspect of our hobby out of the clutches of corporations and other related doers of evil. Stick with it.
Thank you!
Imagine what the FOSS CAD space would look like if AutoCAD etc didn’t offer anything for makers!
I like to refer to that license model as “Drawbackware.” “We’ll offer a less expensive or free version with a lot of the usefulness gouged out.”
Isn’t it wild that all the FORKS of FreeCAD somehow manage to have better versions? FreeCAD is OVER 20 YEARS OLD.
How is it still such a piece of shit software? Because the maintainers are garbage. It has nothing to do with the topology problem, it has to do with workflow, and FreeCAD lacks it almost completely.
Edit: Ohhh, this is realthunder’s fork! Glad to see he’s continuing on it, but yeah - I think by now most FreeCAD users had known/switched over to his version anyhow.
I didn’t know about and was one of the reasons I was not using free as. Now I’ll have to try it again.
I didn’t know, either.
You sound like an ungrateful brat!
I’ve been spending this weekend learning FreeCAD as well. Although I have found it frustrating at times, I’ve felt like its mostly just very unforgiving about “bad design”. For example, freeCAD has been working best for me when I actually sketch every single element out. Every face, every cut, every pocket is part of a sketch and then a 1 step operation. If you design like that then FreeCAD is actually quite powerful, and I’m starting to like it.
I agree! It does enforce being clean and thoughtful about your design. But the inability to use a single sketch for more than one operation still bugs me. I loved being able to plan out and see all (or at least multiple) features in a single sketch in Fusion. In FreeCAD I can only figure out how to do this by making a master sketch and then projecting single features out to multiple other sketches, which works, but like everything in FreeCAD, just takes more time…
Exactly this - FreeCAD is great, but you have to learn to do things its way if you want stable designs. While there is a learning curve, it’s really no worse than Fusion360 was in figuring out how to achieve my design goals. There are fantastic YouTube channels out there, like MangoJelly when you do get stuck. I converted all my older designs from Fusion360 to FreeCAD, and everything since is in FreeCAD, and I haven’t looked back. I think many people are just afraid to admit they are daunted by FreeCAD, and rather than work to understand it, they just complain and say it’s bad, without ever actually putting any effort into learning the platform.
One body per sketch was always a deal breaker for me, so it’s good to hear that limitation is gone.
Do you know if sketches are still required to represent a single continuous face? For example, 3 concentric circles would not be allowed because it is ambiguous which parts are “surface” and which are “holes”. F360 doesn’t impose this limitation because it allows you to select individual sketch faces to move into 3D space, whereas FreeCAD considers that a single operation on the entire sketch.
FreeCAD does indeed perform a single operation on a given sketch, but I think the problem you’re encountering is the fact that FreeCAD cannot perform any operation to solidify a sketch that would result in more than one discontiguous solid.
You can, for example, totally extrude 3 concentric circles into a pad provided they intersect another solid surface that at the very least spans the gap between the edges of the circles. Your example in particular results in a cylinder with a hole in it, and another cylinder centered in that hole. The geometry is not actually ambiguous:
The above is just one sketch to create the rectangle, and then the other sketch is precisely what you described, three concentric circles of random diameter:
I did this in the bog standard 0.21 release, not the Realthunder fork, and with no other additions, mods, or workbenches.
FreeCAD cannot perform any operation to solidify a sketch that would result in more than one discontiguous solid.
Link can do this with a single sketch+pad (which is what I was referring to in the original post)
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I was literally just starting to learn FreeCAD and was commenting to a friend about how inflexible the design process was, I’m absolutely going to give this a go.
I share your general sentiment about fusion. I’ve been avoiding FOSS CAD for the reasons you laid out, but I am somewhat tempted to give this a try. I wonder how well maintained it will be over time…
After I built my Voron I started using SuperSlicer, which is a fork of PrusaSlicer, which is itself a fork of Slic3r. SuperSlicer has some pretty nice features and I like the way it slices models, but it’s also a bit flakey at times. Going from GitHub activity, it’s only maintained by a single dev and they’re only able to work on the project sporadically every few months.
I also used SuperSlicer until I recently tried OrcaSlicer and was very impressed. The developer of SuperSlicer recently quit his job to work on it full time though, so I imagine it will start to catch up in features soon.
I don’t use it for… reasons, but I suspect orcaslicer has picked up a lot of what made superslicer special, and is actively maintained.
What slicer do you personally use?
Not OP but orcaslicer is very nice, it’s my daily driver for sure
I use the original, prusaslicer. Orcaslicer does a good job of packaging and releasing bambulab’s fork but I’m not yet convinced that their UI is a net win, it’s super glitchy at times (at least on Linux), depends on closed-source Bambu features (network plugin), has features missing (fix model only available on windows) and is easy to fault (you can easily let it do stupid things because of combination of options developers didn’t foresee). That said, it’s compelling prusaslicer to give its UX some polish and to backport some advanced features, so this competition is good and no option is inferior or feels like you are missing out in practice.
FreeCAD is an okay piece of software, I’ve been able to use it but it has a learning curve and in some aspects it is limited. Sounds like this branch removes some of those limitations which is neat.
I’ve also used AutoCAD which is very functional but can cost thousands of dollars a year…
If you are used to using F360 or SolidWorks, this is the version of FreeCAD you should be using. It doesn’t have the TNP problems that the main branch has. Of course, just like commercial CAD, it’s possible to break models by deleting references, and you’ll have to fix them. Experienced users of CAD know this is always possible.
I’ve been using RealThunder’s branch of FreeCAD for a few years and I’m able to do whatever I want, pretty much just like I do in SolidWorks in my day job. Most of my time is spent in the PartDesign workbench, which is really what most people designing for 3D printing should be using.
Remember that you’re using software built and maintained by volunteers. If you want constant improvement, you’re better off paying people whose sole job it is to work on the software. It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth paying for.
How does FreeCAD stack against Blender?
I don’t think they are really comparable.
Personally I see blender more as an animation or organic modeling tool whereas CAD software like fusion is better when you need exact dimensions for your parts
This is nothing you have to see personally like this but it’s pretty much the definition. Blender is not CAD. End of story.
CAD-Sketcher blender addon. 'nuff said. Blender CAN be CAD. If you want it to be.
And somehow this addon that has existed for less than a year, is easier and more intuitive to use than FreeCAD has made itself after 20 years.
imho this isn’t really up to the task of complex CAD. But it’s good enough for very simple things i suppose.
So is there an open source direct modeler? I’ve been working in Designspark, but while it is not currently as onerous as F360 or OnShape (god forbid I stumble into something that other people decide might be worth a few bucks), it’s still a (free for now) subscription and has had feature erosion, specifically importing darn near anything pre-existing. I’m not making anything complex enough that it suffers from the Direct Modeling workflow, and I find that workflow much more intuitive. Shoot, I’d even settle for a fork of Solvespace with chamfers and fillets, LOL.
I haven’t used Blender for this purpose (or FreeCAD at all, for that matter…just OpenSCAD for doing models for 3D printing). But it looks like Blender has some sort of add-on support for parametric modeling that’s being worked on.
A constraint-based sketcher addon created by hlorus for Blender that allows you to create precise 2d shapes by defining CAD geometric constraints like tangents, distances, angles, equal and more. These Sketches are then converted into beziers or mesh which still stay editable through a fully non-destructive workflow i.e, Geometry nodes and modifiers.
It’s not, historically, the main purpose of the software, but maybe Blender will ultimately wind up moving into the CAD world too to some degree.
I know a bunch of people already told you that they are not the same program, but this is the way I always think about them:
Blender is like modeling with clay. You mold it, push it around, and stick more pieces on here and there.
FreeCAD is like modeling with building blocks. You measure the part you need and select the block’s that build that part. You can also swap out blocks for different blocks at any time.
Blender is not CAD, they don’t stack at all.
How does graph paper stack against a canvas? One is for engineering, the other is for art.
Also, FreeCAD is at least a decade behind Blender in the “No it’s actually really good now and is actually being widely adopted in industry” department.
Blender is a swiss army knife, not really comparable, but i’d recommend it over most CAD software if your main focus is 3d printing as most slicer convert to mesh data anyway.
Thanks! I know I’ve tried freecad in the past and found it really tough to wrap my head around, but I’ll give it a try because as I said a few days ago, at any moment the tinkercad I use regularly could go away.
seem like trying to write Latin.
This is quite funny for someone who has learned a (tiny) bit of latin, because this is 100% true, in like a positive and negative way.
FreeCAD is “unforgiving”, in that pretty much every dimension/curve/shape must be defined exactly as you want, in exchange, this makes the software very good if you know what you want to create, and how.
I’ve only used a tiny bit of Fusion at a school once, but it was a lot more “freeform” than FreeCAD, this made it easier to use, but as someone who knows what they want to create pretty exactly, I prefer FreeCAD
This reflects languages. Latin is very organized, a single verb ending changes it from like “he who did” to like “he who has done” and you’re supposed to know that. It’s heavily theorized (and is 100% paritially true) that Latin is specifically designed as an efficient language to move troops. So, harder to learn but more accuracy.
English on the other hand trades accuracy for a more natural way of relatively easy to understand speak (with a good bit of overlap where there is confusion)
Thanks I will have to check it out. I wish it had a flatpak or deb though. I hate appimages.
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I was using link branch for awhile. It’s OK, FreeCAD is OK. It does suck at a lot though. Once solidworks released their maker plan, I jumped on it. It’s such a superior product.
Curious to know which version of freecad did you try ? Few days ago I installed the latest edge version from snap (0.22 in progress) and didn’t notice this issue. I know about this issue & realthunder, also watched some of his interviews and found that the guy is a master of his field.
Anyways, now I’m on beta channel of freecad-realthunder.
