you can't just draw a cube and extend part of one face

I used to work with sketches in SOLIDWORKS and Inventor too, but those were just easier to use.

Still, it keeps improving, so fingers crossed.

It's ok to not get it when it comes to parametric CAD. I can't get the hang of OpenSCAD. And don't get me started on Blender. Years of trying, and I STILL can't make that doughnut......

I think that it's under very active development right now so that's might be the source of the instability. IIRC there are alternative assembly workbenches that are more stable.

Looking forward to trying it out. I've been teaching myself Freecad for a while and I'll be honest, it has been a mildly infuriating experience at times. Still seems like the best option for a free CAD tool without ridiculous licensing terms though. This looks like quite an improvement in any case. Hopefully it'll even fix the regular crashes I've been getting.

Keep trying and keep practicing. Install FreeCAD and practice with MangoJelly tutorials to learn.

One thing that often makes it hard for people switching to any new CAD is things don't work the same way. So do your best to forget the way you used to do things. Fusion isn't FreeCAD and FreeCAD isn't Fusion. You will need to learn new things. So don't expect it to work the same way.

The next thing that is very helpful is to find models to practice and gain confidence and skills. MangoJelly tutorials are great to learn from, but you need varied practice to gain skills. Here are 50 models you can practice with to gain confidence and skills using any CAD program. Other practice models can be found if you do some searching.

Good Luck!

I've been using it since it was a weekly release, (now I mostly use the 1.2 weeklies), and it's been very stable even on a low powered mini desktop with 8 Gbits of shared RAM. I think they are finally finishing up the timeline that was set out when they went after the TNP mitigation and general cleanup of the disaster that was .1X series of FreeCAD with the 1.0 release.

Spoiler Alert: I think the 1.2 Weekly releases are even better yet. So give that a shot if you are willing to put up with occasional breakage and problems. The more users of different skills with different hardware can really help speed the killing of bugs if you report issues. Besides, it's just plain fun!

I used SW professionally for years before I retired and SW was suddenly not free to use for me anymore. Personally, I found the switch to FreeCAD was pretty easy for me. But the ease or struggle to learn something new varies a lot between people.

Best I can tell you is to forget everything you "know" from SW as best you can. And when you get frustrated that what you are doing in FreeCAD doesn't work like SW, try to remember we ain't in Kansas anymore Toto. That's how I had to approach things.

Good Luck! I'm pullin' for ya!

Is this worth trying to learn if I can already fiddle around in blender?
I have already given it a go a while ago but couldnt really get easily started so I dropped it.

CAD is a very different workflow than 3D modeling like blender. Someone could probably explain it better than me but think of CAD as being for engineering and something like blender being for artists. Thats not to say you cant do art in a CAD program or engineering in a modeling program its just a different tool for a different job.

That commenter was rude but it would be nice to have a link to the release for those of us not in an environment to watch the video. I appreciate video posts even if I cant watch them though!

I think the 1.1 release is the end step of the original plan started back at the .18 release of fixing the major underlying issues that FreeCAD had. And the mitigating of TPN and the need to redo a fair amount of code to make FreeCAD better. That effort led to the 1.0 release. And the 1.1 release is the result of the cleanup and optimization of the code in FreeCAD. Which is the final step in the roadmap. And the video talks a lot about those improvements in stability, speed, and simplification of use.

I understand. But I made an "executive decision" for the video link because most people like to see some the improvements in action. I felt that it would get more people excited and would be quicker for them to get through.

The extensive change log is on the FreeCAD github page if you want to read all about it. Download FreeCAD 1.1 while you are there!

And I highly encourage everyone at least skim through that page to see all the changes as they get the time to do so.

I knew MangoJelly but not this Deltahedra. I'm finding the latter's video more interesting tbh, and less time-wasting.

Checkout Deltahedron freecad tutorials on youtube. As a complete beginner, I got reasonably good at freecad pretty fast with them.

I think I can explain it.

CAD tools are focused on parametric design, meaning you have parameters that effect how the model is shaped.

It's very useful for creating a product. Let's say you made an object 10mm too short, and a whole bunch of other features are based on that measurement. If you update it to add 10mm, if you're using the tool correct, those features built on top will adjust and accept the change.

If you do that in a tool like blender, any feature based off of that incorrect measurement will have to be painstakingly updated one at a time.

So it's basically a question of "does your design have/need dependancies?"

Depends on what your goals are. Despite my inability to grasp Blender, it's a great piece of software for those organic and artistic designs. And to be fair, it can do a bit of CAD work with an add-on. But it soon hits a limit for that kind of work.

But not everyone can "see" the different type of workflow and end results that each type of software is good at. I certainly cannot see that Blender doughnut well enough to make it. Even with my hand being held in the video tutorials. But I can take that same doughnut and turn it into a torque converter for an automatic transmission. Go figure....

Still, I keep trying to make that Blender doughnut despite my lack of success so far. And I encourage you to keep trying to make something with CAD. Don't give up. We're going to win someday!

Deltahedra is fast-paced for sure. I enjoy his tutorials also. Another person you can check out is AllVisuals4U. He makes short and to the point tutorials also. He keeps them to 5 to 6-minute videos.

Thanks!

Don't post it

I enjoyed the video.

I have some ~20 years casual experience working with Rhino, but never working truly parametrically, and never got around to learning Grasshopper.

Having watched this, I'm honestly considering giving FreeCAD a spin, and I don't think that would have been the case if you'd linked to the article. So thanks for that! 😊 👌

Do not use Onshape for any purpose whatsoever. Anything you produce with it can be trivially stolen by others. I don't even trust their paid (i.e. extortion) tier to protect your files stored in their cloud from being perused privately by Onshape themselves just in case you may happen to have produced anything commercially viable, and/or shared with the feds.

Just don't.

Openscad is such a neat piece of software. If only it had chamfers and fillets it might be useful, too.

Ok that makes sense, I will give it another go. Thank you.

I do some STL editing for 3D prints in blender, which I don't see myself changing, but I also design some cases, organizers, token holders etc for boardgames, for which it sounds like CAD would be a better fit. And yeah, as I said i did try it before but hit a wall and went with blender which I was more familiar with. Did the job alright, but perhaps was not the optimal way. I'll give it another spin with a different focus now.

Good luck!

Not so many viable options on Linux. I don't think many people are unaware their work is public, but it is a very good and reliable platform nonetheless.

OpenCAD as a comparison crashes on my setup if I ad much as load one of the example models included in the program.

I don't love the public saves in Onshape but I would probably not be doing any modeling at all without it.