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Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

FreeCAD is the closest, but unlike the Eagle vs Kicad comparison, it's miles behind Inventor and Solid works.

I just bought a lifetime license for Alibre CAD, it's for profit closed source but much more usable.

FreeCAD needs a benefactor like CERN for KiCAD to bring it up to speed.

I try to use freeCAD whenever possible. I'm not a professional level, and assemblies are a bit scary, but its overall a nice tool.

Just the other day I cloned one of these[1] in freecad using the image importing and scaling, quickly made a trace, added a pad and some chamfers, and had it on the 3d printer in about 25 minutes.

I'd love if FreeCAD got a benefactor like you mention.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/TILISMA-Book-Page-Holder-Accessories/...

The beauty of 3D printing, and the community is that you could have saved yourself some time and downloaded one of the many, many versions of this available online already.

I want to love FreeCAD, but it is hard to work with for complex designs compared to other tools; topological naming has been an absolute nightmare, but I persevere, it's improving slowly. At least now I'm less likely to have to throw away hours/days of design because I got into a mess.

As a Linux user, my options are slim, so I keep learning FreeCAD, and SCAD, but I'm always a little jealous when I watch a YouTube tutorial of how to do something that takes relative ease in tool X, but is an order of magnitude more complex to do in FreeCAD.

FreeCAD getting a benefactor that can propel it ahead would be huge; donations are great, but my measly donation is barely going to cover the cost of a bug fix.

> you could have saved yourself some time and downloaded one of the many, many versions of this available online already.

I enjoy the act of technical drawing and 3d design. Downloading pre-existing models doesn't have the same "I did that" feeling. Especially after a long day at the coding mines, doing some shape manipulation is like brain yoga.

The biggest reason why I love freeCAD is how it's just there. All other cad software has long user agreements, log-ins, subscription tiers. The fact I can just install it and open and get to work somewhat makes up for the odd workflow. I learned AutoDesk Inventor when I was practically a child so I always reached for it when I could get a student license, but after that expired and the cad market started moving fast, I just went to freeCAD.

I don't want to do real work in a browser, I hate browsers. So on Linux its either freeCAD or wine+fusion360.

> I enjoy the act of technical drawing and 3d design. Downloading pre-existing models doesn't have the same "I did that" feeling. Especially after a long day at the coding mines, doing some shape manipulation is like brain yoga.

Right!

I have a cheap 3D printer. It took me over a year to decide that buying it wouldn't mean another white elephant gadget.

So I made myself a list of things I'd always be able to download and print if I never managed to learn CAD. I've barely printed any of them, because I can do my own things already.

God loves the OpenSCAD/code CAD devs I am sure, but it is not really the case that you can just "program" general objects, because real life things are not simple geometrical constructions; there's a lot of arbitrary organic design in them. A lot of compromises and tweaks and useful accommodations, that lead to some hellish maths (and if I was good at maths I'd have a maths degree, not a CS degree).

I decided I would push past the pain points of learning FreeCAD, and I have now become comfortable enough in it, and designed enough real things.

I am borderline religious about the impact the combination of FreeCAD, PrusaSlicer and a cheap 3D printer has had on my ability to reason about physical objects, and make things I have only before imagined. It's incredibly liberating: I am now someone who can make physical things.

Like you I also love that I don't have to think about costs or licences.

FreeCAD isn't perfect but it's not in the same "clearly left behind" category as GIMP. It's more like QGIS: somewhat idiosyncratic but actually quite powerful. It's made my life enormously better.

As a Linux user, onshape (web based CAD) is streets ahead of FreeCAD. Seems on par with parts of Fusion I use (of course, Fusion also includes FEA, CAM and lots of other stuff). Not libre, but free for personal use (all your free tier designs are public) and works on Linux.

I'm still preparing myself for when I need to learn onshape to do something freeCAD cant.

You basically made a list of reasons why I avoid it, its in a browser, you need a log-in, basically zero ownership of your designs on the free tier, with a jump to $1500/y for the "standard" tier. I know cad programs are difficult to make but damn they make it easy to not want to be their customer.

I've created an account but I need to do some reading, it's a different enough workflow to FreeCAD, that I couldn't immediately figure out how to do some basic things.

I tried FreeCAD but all versions crash within minutes of using it, making it unusable.

Have you checked the logs or tried submitting the issue? If you haven't they won't probably even know about such an issue and this won't be fixed. To put this in context if you would be paying for this, and have such a problem, you would for sure either submit the issue or cancel/refund the license and maybe put some feedback somewhere.

Weird, I don't think I've ever had freeCAD crash on me except maybe if I was being a real jerk to it.

I typically just use the latest version from the arch repos and it's been smooth sailing.

Well, whenever I’ve trialed FreeCAD I was hoping to love it, so certainly not intentionally being a jerk to it, but also certainly being a complete and utter n00b to it. Never have gotten to the point of doing something I could use.

> FreeCAD is the closest, but unlike the Eagle vs Kicad comparison, it's miles behind Inventor and Solid works.

That just means we have exciting changelogs ahead of us.

In my case, I remember running into some edge cases with parametric designs, but I was overall very happy to not have supported an untrustworthy business.

And, to put my money where my mouth is, I just renewed my donation in Liberapay.

You need an massive amount of money indeed to have a free product that matches the Autodesk commercial offer in CAD tools. Like some EU grant or something. I know FreeCAD is used by corporations such as Behringer, are they even giving back to open source? I doubt it, but it's apparently good enough for them...

Exactly, I have been struggling with FreeCAD and had to go back to fusion many times. Unlike Kicad and Blender which are good alternatives in their sector that work.

Any recommendations for MacOS?

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