Wanted to share this since this was a long Project. Since Autodesk started changing Fusions functionality, from limiting active projects, to changing their terms of service. Since I need a CAD tool for my 3D Printable designs, I started migrating to a new cross platform CAD tool. That happened to be FreeCAD.
Learning FreeCAD wasn’t easy, but was well worth my time. And after slowly pecking at it for 11 months, I was able to re-build every design I made (that I cared about).
I’ve made my 3D Printable designs available on my GitHub if you are interested: https://github.com/the16bitgamer/16BitVirtualStudiosDesigns
Nicely done! I’m still in the “slowly pecking at it for 11 months” stage, but in my case its closer to 24 months now. My biggest problem is that FreeCAD still feels like work and Fusion360 feels like something I can just eff-around with and still get good parts out of.
I’ve been thinking about trying out CAD Sketcher for Blender except that I’m not really proficient in Blender either.
While I agree you can mess with fusion more, I found my old designs to be flawed and filled with issues.
How much do you use it? For me, once I dedicated a bit of time to YouTube tutorials and realized most of what I wanted to make could be done with booleans, it started getting fun.
A few projects, but not enough to learn all the differences. And not enough to change my mindset toward sketches. I usually draw compound sketches that aren’t valid in FreeCAD and I tend to realize that too late. CAD is kind of a zone-out hobby for me, my brain often isn’t fully engaged.
If you don’t mind dropping a small amount of coin, Solidworks has a new maker version that is full fledged Solidworks for under $100 a year. Small price for the gold standard in my opinion. I think FreeCAD is better then CAD sketcher for blender. Much higher learning curve.
Lack of Linux or BSD support is a dealbreaker for me.
Yeah that does suck, I’m stuck with windows for work anyways so that’s not a big deal to me
I haven’t had a Windows install at home or work that I’ve “owned” for over a decade so, it’s a lot more of an inconvenience to me, to be fair. I don’t want to re-learn an OS that I spent so much effort removing from the realm of “my problem”.
Orrrrrrr… You know… Keep using FreeCAD, supporting the need for FOSS solutions since it seems to be working well and won’t have the price hike that will eventually come with all commercial products.
I hadn’t heard that, thanks! An annual $100 is well within what I’m willing to pay for my hobbyist use.
Yeah it’s totally worth it, don’t get me wrong, I like FreeCAD but it does have it’s limitations. The solidworks license comes with their sculpting tool as well.
I don’t want to be this guy, but if you are willing to fork that much, perhaps you could consider donating some to FreeCAD? See it as an investment: in the end you would get a better version of a software that you truly own 🙂
I don’t really like what’s been built so far and I’m not qualified to contribute, so it’s entirely possible the more it’s developed the more I’ll come to dislike using it. I don’t want to own freecad (yet).
Totally fair and fine :) Having kept an eye on the project for several years already, I think it’s heading in the right direction (and no alternative has emerged), but yeah, the road ahead is very long!
If they had a fund set up solely dedicated to a complete UI rework, with input from UX designers, I’d consider donating.