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I'm amazed at FreeCAD's abilities. It needs a better name. Thinking of it as simply "cad software" like calling a 2-GHz computer in your pocket a "phone". (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I thought I would knock some dust off my drafting skills after a small chat with @captain_[email protected]

Seeing this image on the tutorial made me realize, FreeCAD seems to be a Technical Geometry Super-Suite. It makes sense that CAD would grow to include all of these things. But I thought sharing the initial perspective of some one who hasn't looked at this stuff in about 18 years might be interesting.

Granted I'm not actually familiar with most of this stuff, and none of it from the POV of FreeCAD. If this can deliver 10% of what I'm looking at, I'm in for a treat.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Can it export STL/3MF without making all the circles low poly yet?

Last time I tried it freecad was not usable for 3d printing because it doesn't export properly.

With the naming bug that still exists too I found it basically unusable even for basic parts. It feels like going back 20 years compared to fusion 360.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I noticed a similar problem importing step files... I no longer had circles, I had nonagons... I would love to delete my windows vm that only exists for fusion 360.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

If you are comfortable with all your models being available for download and some wonky Terms of Use that may let random internet people profit off your designs but not you, then OnShape in a full-screen browser feels about as good as F360 does. I guess you could also pay for it, but despite finding it pretty nice, I am iffy about paying Solid Edge prices for something browser based. I understand SolidWorks has slapped together a browser version as well, but nobody likes it.

Linux wise, there's just not much outside FreeCAD and SolveSpace. BricsCAD is an okay evolution of AutoCAD, and VariCAD is a less good one.

I may have done a longer writeup than anybody needed the other day.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

From my perspective the biggest thing wrong with FreeCAD is that it's a single threaded app in a multicore world. If you load large stuff, the app freezes and one core is working really hard for a while.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Isn't like every CAD program single core? People got scammed hard with Xeon in the past. CAD PC salesmen had/have absolutely no idea what they were talking about

Biggest speedup has been the GPU integration. The single core stuff doesn't seem to matter much anymore.